When much is taken, something is returned.

Books must be treated with respect, we feel that in our bones, because words have power. Bring enough words together they can bend space and time.

I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro.

Bill Door was impressed. Miss Flitworth could actually give the word "revenue", which had two vowels and one diphthong, all the peremptoriness of the word "scum.

I'm interested in mythology generally, but India has no special place in my heart - although Hindu gods seem a lot more fun.

You have to start out learning to believe the little lies. "So we can believe the big ones?" Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.

The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren't old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow.