“Whilst never actually rebuffing a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to him which would not sound inane.”

“the whole idea of boys being people you would actually choose to spend time with was pretty much totally incomprehensible to me. i could never think of anything to say to them, and they seemed equally dumbstruck by my presence. ”

“With a kind of wry envy, Hazel realized that Bigwig was actually looking forward to meeting the Efrafan assault. He knew he could fight and he meant to show it. He was not thinking of anything else. The hopelessness of their chances had no important place in his thoughts. Even the sound of the digging, clearer already, only set him thinking of the best way to sell his life as dearly as he could.”

“He always told his girl, "If only these walls could talk... the world would know just how hard it is to tell the truth in a story in which everyone's a liar."But the walls didn't talk.”

“But the more he strained to think, the clearer it became to him that it was undoubtedly so, that he had actually forgotten, overlooked in his life one small circumstance - that death would come and everything would end, that it was not worth starting anything and that nothing could possibly be done about it. Yes, it was terrible, but it was so.”

“People would call him Professor Fang, which sounded so much like a super villain that he wasn't sure he could go through with it.”