He looked up at them, a scruffy Napoleon with his laces trailing, exiled to a rose-trellised Elba.

She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn't.

It was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying.

If you want to change a whole people, then you start with the girls. It stands to reason: they learn faster, and they pass on what they learn to their children.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

Banana daiquiris aren't knock-'em-back-by-the-flagon.

You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't, he sent men to come and take it away.