“This was an interesting thought; it had never occurred to me that one's name could be a compass.”

“I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life”

“It was quite wrong of me Had I heard what I thought I’d heard or were my ears playing hob with me It was more likely that the sun and the moon should suddenly dance a jolly jig in the heavens than that one of my sisters should apologize. It was simply unheard of.”

“As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.No ... eight days a week.”

“I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.”

“Death by family silver, I thought, before I could turn off that part of my mind.”

“Like most, I was a solitary boy at first, keeping to my books and weeping in the hedgerows whenever I could get away on my own. Surely, I thought, I must be the saddest child in the world; that there must be something innately horrid about me to cause my father to cast me off so heartlessly. I believed that if I could discover what it was, there might be a chance of putting things right, of somehow making it up to him.”