I tell you, commander, it's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.

No one knew where you were before you were born, but when you were born, it wasn't long before you found you'd arrived with your return ticket already punched.

I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

It's not morbid to talk about death. Most people don't worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.

It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.