On the whole, anything that gets you writing and keeps you writing is a good thing. Anything that stops you writing is a bad thing.

The converse held reassuringly true: daylight was safe. Daylight was always safe.

Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.

It doesn't matter that I can't remember the details any longer: death happened to her. Death happens to all of us.

It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.

And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.' 'They kill themselves, you mean?' said Bod. [...] 'Indeed.' 'Does it work? Are they happier dead?' 'Sometimes. Mostly, no. It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

There are some dogs which, when you meet them, remind you that, despite thousands of years of man-made evolution, every dog is still only two meals away from being a wolf. These dogs advance deliberately, purposefully, the wilderness made flesh, their teeth yellow, their breath a-stink, while in the distance their owners witter, "He's an old soppy really, just poke him if he's a nuisance," and in the green of their eyes the red campfires of the Pleistocene gleam and flicker.