“You know what they say, Queenie: ALWAYS bet like you have a pair.”

“You know what they say, Two pairs a company, cheese a croud”

“It must be nice, Queenie thought, to be one thing or another, to know where you belonged.”

“Bet you never eat, he says. Bet you drink up the oxygen like it's butter. Bet you can go for days on nothing but thoughts.”

“Someone says 'inauguration' in my line of work, and you can just bet there'll be freaky shit. It's like quests. You get told to 'go forth and seek the travelcard of destiny' and you know, I mean, you seriously know that it won't have just been left down the back of the sofa.”

“Do you know what he told me after lying under a cliff for thirty six hours with two inches of his femur sticking out? He said: 'Queenie, I think I'm going to pass out and before I do, I'm going to give you a piece of advice' - God, I thought he was going to die and knew and was telling me what to do with his book - and he said quite solemnly: 'Queenie, always stick to Bach and the early Italians' - and passed out cold as a mackerel. And by God, it's not bad advice.”