Grinning like a necrophiliac in a morgue.

- DON’T WORRY, IT WON’T BE FOREVER. - Good. - IT MAY SEEM LIKE FOREVER.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.

Speak softly and employ a huge man with a crowbar.

I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.

And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye.

Juliet's version of cleanliness was next to godliness, which was to say it was erratic, past all understanding and was seldom seen.