“Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.”

“Her clarity gave her purpose and her purpose gave her clarity.”

“Not bad in short, though the last one [understanding the language of animals], isn't half as useful as you might expect, since when all's said and done the language of the beasts tends to revolve around: a) the endless hunt for food, b) finding a warm bush to sleep in the evening, and c) the sporadic satisfication of certain glands. (Many would argue that the language of human kind boils down to this too)”

“A typical master. Right to the end, he didn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgeways. Which is a pity, because at that last moment I’d have liked to tell him what I thought of him. Mind you, since in that split second we were, to all intents and purposes, one and the same, I rather think he knew anyway.”

“Hey, we've all got problems, chum. I'm overly talkative. You look like a field of buttercups in a suit.”

“I warn you," the boy went on. "I am a magician of great power. I control many terrifying entities. This being you see before you" - here I rolled my shoulders back and puffed my chest up menacingly - "is but the meanest and least impressive of my slaves." (Here I slumped my shoulders and stuck my stomach out.)”

“In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through."I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry.""Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes.""What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?""More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. (...)”