“The Purdey was not a Purdey but a straight-stocked long-barreled Scott live-pigeon full choke in both barrels thai I had bought from a lot of shotguns a dealer had brought down fron Udine to the Kechlers' villa in Codroipo.”

“Happier than a terrier in a barrel full of rats”

“When he came to, the eels were still being removed from him and Anvar was congratulating one of the rivermen. The man had smashed open a barrel of eels and covered both dwarf and zombie with them.”

“He was having more fun than a barrelful of monkeys.**Several years earlier Spider had actually been tremendously disappointed by a barrelful of monkeys. It had done nothing he had considered particularly entertaining, apart from emit interesting noises, and eventually, once the noises had stopped and the monkeys were no longer doing anything at all—except possibly on an organic level—had needed to be disposed of in the dead of night.”

“Tough to part; lock, stock and barrel. Something remains, like recognizable tastes and smells, which kindle the faculty of memory, yea-pricks the soul.”

“The summer had been mad. It had been like a badger caught in a tarred barrel, fed on chilli an forced to listen to chanting monks.”