Classic authors should be older than I am, and wiser, and on-top of all their deadlines.

There aren't any good guys, and there aren't any bad guys. There's just us. People. Doing our best to get by.

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.

If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do.

You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it.

There were faces at the windows and words written in blood; deep in the crypt a lonely ghoul crunched on something that might once have been alive; forked lightnings slashed the ebony night; the faceless were walking; all was right with the world

I think most things are pretty magical, and that it's less a matter of belief than it is one of just stopping to notice.