“His weakness in this game, and in life, is that he's never prepared for how others will act. They are predetermined but too complex to solve or predict, and there are rules that he is just no good at applying.”

“As I say, all all he wanted from the manuscript was the string. That was the way he was. Nobody could predict what he was going to be interested in next. On the day of the bomb it was string. [...] He had no use at all for tricks and games and rules that other people made up.”

“The width of neck and shoulder suggested a rugby player, the broken nose confirmed it. Which shows just how wrong you can be as he never played the game in his life.”

“It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life exept play games”

“I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.”

“He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!”