“Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.”

“She's quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. I watched her once from the window when she was crossing over Fifth Avenue to go to the park, and that's what she is, roller-skate skinny. You'd like her.”

“She had never been a proficient flirt. Her spasms of kittenish behaviour were graceless and inept, like normal conversation on roller skates. but the combination of the retsina and sun made Emma feel sentimental and light-headed. She reached for her roller skates.”

“There's no backward and no forward, no day other than this. You fill your cart as you go, and that's that.”

“Love is motion Potter love is forward movement but you said yourself the memory reel backward it's all backward with you. You are stuck back there because Potter you don't let yourself move forward your eyes get stuck on things and people.”

“Are you aware, Mr Mayor, then when casually scrying the streets of London, you stand out like a giraffe on roller skates, yes?”