Mr Lipwig, there's a lady in the hall to see you and we've thanked her for not smoking three times and she's still doing it!

His mind worked fast, flying in emergency supplies of common sense, as human minds do, to construct a huge anchor in sanity and prove that what happened hadn't really happened and, if it had happened, hadn't happened much.

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

Their families cordially detested one another.

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.

If there's one thing that really annoys a god, it's not knowing something.

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