Theres no stink more sorrorful than the stink of wet, burnt paper. It means: the end.

Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been fate. People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events -- the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there -- that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

It's tough at the top. It's tough at the bottom. But in between you could use them for horse-shoes.

It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane.

Most of my schooldays were the worst day of my life.

It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country," he read. "This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.

It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.