It is said that the Devil has all the best tunes. This is broadly true. But Heaven has the best choreographers

Granny knew all about bad fortune-telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination.

Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like 'his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,' and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.

He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.

The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got to the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities.

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

Lots of ingenuity gets you through times with no money better than money gets you through times of no ingenuity.