America was, to them, the place that good people went to when they died. They were prepared to believe just about anything could happen in America.

I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.

The problems with success, frankly, are infinitely preferable to the problems of failure.

You musn’t be afraid of the dark.’ ‘I’m not,’ said Shadow. ‘I’m afraid of the people in the dark.

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.

Mirrors,' she said, 'are never to be trusted.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.