Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving

Granny knew all about bad fortune-telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination.

Remember - that which does not kill us can only make us stronger. And that which does kill us leaves us dead!

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever - provided, naturally, that you don't go and look. This is known as finance.

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.'

Either dragons should exist completely or fail to exist at all, he felt. A dragon only half-existing was worse than the extremes.