There was this about vampires : they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were... what was the word... deshabille. It meant untidy, but with bags and bags of style.

And what are you doing on it, I would like to know? Running away from home, yesno? If you were a boy I'd say are you going to seek your fortune?" "Can't girls seek their fortune?" "I think they're supposed to seek a boy with a fortune.

Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.

If Not You, Who Else?

...the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe.

But in his experience it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him.

I don't read an awful lot of fiction and when I do, it tends to be lightweight stuff.