“It was interesting, how much of adult life consisted of pretending.”

“Also: people pretended not to want what they wanted. Pretending tried to hide the will. That was the secret of adult life, the undisclosed motor of the whole thing. People wanted what they wanted. They did what they could to get it. It wasn't complicated. Kenny knew that was the last step he needed to take before he could be an adult: he had to learn what he wanted, then had to learn to want what he wanted.”

“I don't go to school, I don't have parents, I came from the sea to be your husband.”

“It takes knowledge and experience to say precisely and consisely what is true and what is needed. Scholarship often excels in lofty learning and deep digging to emphasise what we knew all along. Adrian Hawkes' little book, based on real life, bring us what so many don't know and greatly need to know. I would not be ashamed to put it alongside many weighty volumes on my study shelves.”

“Books should be like magical jewelled boxes. It’s the writer’s job to tell the story. My job [the artist] is to make you want to pick up the box, and to peer inside.”

“You're tell me those are gnomes pretending to be dwarfs pretending to be elves? Are you trying to play Six Degrees of Bilbo Baggins again?”

“First we need to get a buttload of nails.’‘A buttload? How much is that?’‘Uh…’Granuaile rescued me with her superior knowledge of indefinite units of measurement. ‘I believe that’s slightly more than a shitload but much less than a fuckton.”