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

I don’t think it's weak to admit you made a mistake. That takes strength, if you ask me.

Ninety percent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrassment.

Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them.

The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody's wife. They were also expected to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys.

Education had been easy. Learning things had been harder.

Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, "Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!