“You nearly killed eight people!" I managed to gasp out loud."My count was closer to twelve," returned Havisham as she opened the door. "And anyhow, you can't nearly kill someone. Either they are dead or they are not.”

“I've managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years," she announced with some small sense of achievement. "I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.”

“She wasn't the only one to be physically morphed by reader expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not, and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn't just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.”

“My only companion from the outside world during nineteen years of isolation has been my personal hatred of Thursday Next. It's kind of like the old me suddenly taking over, and I promised myself that this was how I would act if I ever saw you.' 'I have the same thing, but with Tom Stoppard,' I said. 'You'd kill Tom Stoppard?' 'Not at all. I promised myself many years ago that I would throw myself at his feet and scream "I'm not worthy!" if I ever met him, so now if we're ever at the same party or something, I have to be at pains to avoid him. It would be undignified, you see—for him and for me.”

“A missing arm might ruin your symmetry. Personal asymmetry where I come from is a big taboo and brings great shame on the family and sometimes even the whole village.""Do you then have to kill yourself over it or something?""Goodness me, no! The family and village just have to learn to be ashamed--and nuts to them for being so oversensitive.”

“Thursday, you mean everything to me. Not just because you're cute, smart, funny and have a devastatingly good figure and boobs to die for, but that you do right for right's sake - it's what you are and what you do. Even if I never get my magnum opus published, I will still die secure in the knowledge that my time on this planet was well-spent - giving support, love and security to someone who actually makes a difference.”

“You speak baby gibberish?' asked Jack.'Fluently. The adult-education center ran a course, and I have a lot of time on my hands.''So what did he say?''I don't know.''I thought you said you spoke gibberish?''I do. But your baby doesn't. I think he's speaking eitherpre-toddler nonsense, a form of infact burble or an obscure dialect ofgobbledygook. In any event, I can't understand a word he's saying.''Oh.”