Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.

A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling.

It's hard to have anything isn't it? Rare to get it, hard to keep it. This is a damn slippery planet.

Writing novels is the hardest thing I've ever done, including digging irrigation ditches.

The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in this silent room.

You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.

It's fear, Jack. The man deals with a huge amount of fear.' Because he got hurt?' No, not entirely. Fear comes with imagination, it's a penalty, it's the price of imagination.