His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few.

Life doesn't happen in chapters - at least, not regular ones.

Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life.

There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollections you'd really rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short.

Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.

Certainly the Americans want to buy rights, but have no idea what to do with them.

The short conversation that follows eventually led to a tree religion. Its tenet of faith was this: a tree that was a good tree and led a clean decent and upstanding life could be assured of a future life after death. If it was very good indeed it would eventually be reincarnated as five thousand rolls of lavatory paper.