The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off. A dog's wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has it's own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It's like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you.

Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves.

When they're standing right in front of you, kings are a kind of speech impediment.

What're quantum mechanics?" "I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose.

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.

Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them.

I taught myself more in the library than school taught me.