You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't, he sent men to come and take it away.

You can't trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.

I've never really liked the Yanks. ... You can't trust people who pick up the ball all the time when they play football.

Classically, very few people have considered that cleanliness is next to godliness. A rank loincloth and hair in an advanced state of matted entanglement have generally been the badges of office of prophets whose injunction to disdain earthly things starts with soap.

I used to like reading and you read enough books and you overflow and then you start writing.

Only Ron's dog was watching William. He considered that it had, for a dog, a very offensive and knowing look. A couple of months ago someaone had tried to hand William the old story about there being a dog in the city that could talk. (...) The dog in front of William didn't look as if it could talk, but it DID look as if it would swear.

The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.