My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may have been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or perhaps the worst great writer. I do not know. There are few faults you can accuse him of that he is not guilty of. But I love him.

Actually I didn't shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but he could tell I was extremely cross.

She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty.

She smiled again. "Do you like cat?" she said. "Yes," said Richard. "I quite like cats." Anaesthesia looked relieved. "Thigh?" she asked, "or breast?

Night was spreading slowly around the spinning Earth. It should have been full of pinpricks of light. It was not. There were five billion people down there. What was going to happen soon would make barbarism look like a picnic - hot, nasty, and eventually given over to the ants.

Dreams are hopes, and echoes of hope.

The world is always ending, for someone.