I said with perfect honest, "I have no intention of trying to take these suckers out by myself, no.

He laughed, tried to make it into a cough, inhaled at exactly the wrong moment, and then really did cough.

I said with perfect honest, "I have no intention of trying to take these suckers out by myself, no.

My books happen. They tend to blast in from nowhere, seize me by the throat, and howl 'Write me! Write me now!' But they rarely stand still long enough for me to see what and who they are, before they hurtle away again. And so I spend a lot of time running after them, like a thrown rider after an escaped horse, saying 'Wait for me! Wait for me!' and waving my notebook in the air.

He looked at her rather as a man looks at a problem that he would very much prefer to do without. She supposed it was a distinction of a sort to be a harassment to a king.

It is a much more straightforward thing to be a dog, and a dog's love, once given, is not reconsidered.

What we can do, we must do: we must use what we are given, and we must use it the best we can, however much or little help we have for the task. What you have been given is a hard thing--a very hard thing... But my darling, what if there were no one who could do the difficult things?