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.

When I was a kid, I read the science-fiction shelves, and I read the fantasy shelves.

This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here.

It was then that Marvin got religion. Not the quiet, personal kind, that involves doing good deeds and living a better life; not even the kind that involves putting on a suit and ringing people's doorbells; but the kind that involves having your own TV network and getting people to send you money.

By the time you've reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage.