Buttercup's mother hesitated, then put her stew spoon down. (This was after stew, but so is everything. When the first man first clambered from the slime and made his first home on land, what he had for supper that first night was stew.)

You are wonderful, Father.""I'm more than wonderful, how dare you insult me.

Buttercup's mother whirled on him. 'Did you forget to pay your taxes?' (This was after taxes. But everything is after taxes. Taxes were here even before stew.)

The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love you. Like that.)

You're alive!" Fezzik cried. The man in black sat immobile, like a ventriloquist's dummy, just his mouth moving. "That is perhaps the most childishly obvious remark I have ever come across.

I don't guess. I think. I ponder. I deduce. Then I decide. But I never guess.

Why do you wear a mask and hood?" I think everybody will in the near future," was the man in black's reply. "They're terribly comfortable.