I like 'pencil-necked weasel'. It has 'pencil' in it. Pencils are good things. You can draw or write things with pencils. I think it's what you call someone when you're worried that using a long word like 'intellectual' may have too many syllables. It's not something that people who have serious, important things to say call other people.

However you must have sensed a lurking 'but' skulking beneath my happy, blithe, and chipper exterior. A minuscule vexation, like the teeniest lump of raw liver sticking to the inside of my boot.

There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubbles in amber,” she explained. “There’s a lot of time in London, and it has to go somewhere—it doesn’t all get used up at once.” “I may still be hung over,” sighed Richard. “That almost made sense.

I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.

The cat wrinkled its nose and managed to look unimpressed. "Calling cats," it confided, "tends to be a rather overrated activity. Might as well call a whirlwind.

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

"Death's a capricious thing, innit?" "Yes. Yes, she is."