Bod quite liked crows. He thought they were funny and he liked the way they helped to keep the graveyard tidy.

I'm never, I hope, stupid enough to believe that Twitter or blogging or any of this stuff is a substitute for actually doing the work or writing a book.

I wish being a beekeeper, which I am, gave you a free pass on the carbon footprint, but it doesn't.

There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My mother, who had organized the party, told me that the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before, and that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first book.

Richard did not believe in angels, he never had. He was damned if he was going to start now. Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you and saying your name.

Nobody will ever hurt her. She’ll just smile her faint vague wonderful smile and walk away.

She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful.