The secret is not to dream," she whispered. "The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from and I know where I'm going. You cannot fool me any more. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine.

It was then that Marvin got religion. Not the quiet, personal kind, that involves doing good deeds and living a better life; not even the kind that involves putting on a suit and ringing people's doorbells; but the kind that involves having your own TV network and getting people to send you money.

People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

He felt that the darkness was full of unimaginable horrors - and the trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only too easy to imagine.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.