Anyway, if you stop tellin' people it's all sorted out afer they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.

It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military maneuvers, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.

People like that don't need a reason apart from "because I can". They have a nightmare and try to make it happen.

She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it.

Writing, for me, is a little like wood carving. You find the lump of tree (the big central theme that gets you started), and you start cutting the shape that you think you want it to be. But you find, if you do it right, that the wood has a grain of its own (characters develop and present new insights, concentrated thinking about the story opens new avenues). If you're sensible, you work with the grain and, if you come across a knot hole, you incorporate that into the design. This is not the same as 'making it up as you go along'; it's a very careful process of control.

They looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite ways up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first.

I'd rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.