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

So much paperwork to read! So much paperwork to push away! So much paperwork to pretend he hadn't received and that might have been eaten by gargoyles.

Ponder just let it happen. It's because their minds are so often involved with deep and problematic matters, he told himself, that their mouths are allowed to wander around making a nuisance of themselves.

If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power... they will talk, they will gloat. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.

It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the the kind of delibrate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life.

When much is taken, something is returned.

Jesus won't cut you off before you're through With him you won't never get a crossed line, And when your bill comes it'll all be properly itemised He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life. The phone line to the saviour's always free of interference He's in at any hour, day or night And when you call J-E-S-U-S you always call toll-free He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life.