“Go to hell, Willy, our souls eat poetry, but one has seven deadly sins to feed!”

“if you go up there Old Georgie'll freeze you an' dig out your soul with a cruel'n'crookit spoony an' eat it so you'll never even be reborned an' your body'll be turned into a frostbited boulder.”

“The uncreated and the dead exist solely in our actual and virtual pasts.”

“Dead things show you what you’ll be too one day.”

“Ruddy hell, the cold smacked my face with an iron spade! Now I knew why northerners go in for beards, woad, and body grease.”

“Hate eats the hater the way ogres eat little boys.”

“Writing poetry's,' I looked around the solarium, but Madame Crommelynck's got a tractor beam, 'sort of . . . gay.' '"Gay"? A merry activity?' This was hopeless. 'Writing poems is . . . what creeps and poofters do.' 'So are you one of these „creeps”? 'No.' 'Then you are a „pooof-ter”, whatever one is?' 'No!' 'Then your logic is eluding me.”