Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something.

Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words.

It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.

One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.

He was, he would be the first to admit, a coward, an incompetent, and not even very good at being a failure.

I know loads of coppers and dealt with them a lot when I was a journalist - coppers are easy to write for; they tend to run on rails.

That's one form of magic, of course." "What, just knowing things?" "Knowing things that other people don't know.