I wouldn't trust you with a bucket of water if my knickers were on fire!

Fate can be one mean god at times.

Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.

It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.

At some time in the recent past someone had decided to brighten the ancient corridors of the University by painting them, having some vague notion that Learning Should Be Fun. It hadn’t worked. It’s a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colors are chosen, institutional decor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow or surgical appliance pink. By some little-understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those colors always smell slightly of boiled cabbage—even if no cabbage is ever cooked in the vicinity.

They were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer.

My idea of a good novel was one you made enough money out of to buy a greenhouse.