When she spoke again it was in the thin, careful and above all brave voice of someone who has pulled themselves together despite overwhelming odds but might let go again at any moment.

It was one of those problematic occasions with long silences, sporadic coughs, and people saying isolated things like, "Well, isn't this nice.

Knowing how bad you could be is a great encouragement to being good.

A witch who is bored might do ANYTHING. People said things like 'we had to make our own amusements in those days' as if this signified some kind of moral worth, and perhaps it did, but the last thing you wanted a witch to do was get bored and start making her own amusements, because witches sometimes had famously erratic ideas about what was amusing.

Sometimes I feel that the world is made up of sensible people who know the plot and bloody idiots who don't.

I don't read an awful lot of fiction and when I do, it tends to be lightweight stuff.

I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.