This man was so absent-mindedly clever that he could paint pictures that didn’t just follow you around the room but went home with you and did the washing-up.

The nice thing about your police procedural as opposed to your classic murder mystery is that in a murder mystery you don't know who did it. Whereas in a police procedural you know, you know everything often and you're watching the police home in.

Lots of ingenuity gets you through times with no money better than money gets you through times of no ingenuity.

The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).

The characters are the plot. What they do and say and the things that happen to them are, in a sense, what the plot is. You can't take character and plot apart from each other, really.

You know, I never imagined there were he-dryads. Not even in an oak tree." One of the giants grinned at him. Druellae snorted. "Stupid! Where do you think acorns come from?

She was not, herself, hugely in favour of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn't exactly difficult. Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they'd been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they'd got the label which said "mother," everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said "child".