He'd been an angel once. He hadn't meant to Fall. He'd just hung around with the wrong people.

This is Morbidia," said Vlad. "Although she's been calling herself Tracy lately, to be cool.

Never cross a woman with a star on a stick, young lady. They've got a mean streak.

I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod. Oh, and since this is England, I had better add, "If wet, in the library." Who could say that this is bad?

Whatever you choose, your choice will mean there are two new worlds. And perhaps sometimes, on the edge of sleep, we will see the shadow of the other world. There will be no unhappy memories.

For the first time in her life Granny wondered whether there might be something important in all these books people were setting store by these days, although she was opposed to books on strict moral grounds, since she had heard that many of them were written by dead people and therefore it stood to reason reading them would be as bad as necromancy. Among the many things in the infinitely varied universe with which Granny did not hold was talking to dead people, who by all accounts had enough troubles of their own.

Quit while you're a head, that's what I say.