It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the the kind of delibrate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life.

Stand before your god, bow before your king, kneel before your man.

One of the things forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human.

One of the hardest lessons in young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking.

What I've always said was, hang in there, let me write what I want to write, and you'll probably like it.

Perhaps the magic would last, perhaps it wouldn't. But then again, what does?

You did what you were told or you didn't get paid, and if things went wrong it wasn't your problem. It was the fault of whatever idiot has accepted this message for sending in the first place. No one cared about you, and everyone at headquarters was an idiot. It wasn't your fault, no one listened to you. Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn't care.