“Atop a Ferris wheel, Orson Welles told Joseph Cotten how Italy's thirty years of war and terror and bloodshed had produced the Renaissance and Michelangelo, and how Switzerland's five hundred years of democracy and peace had produced, goddamn, only the cuckoo clock.”

“You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

“I'm a woman. Forty-five in female years (which is about a hundred and thirty in male years - bastards).”

“For every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.”

“It was essential that someone, somewhere, even if it was only the fairy folk, should know that the human race had produced more than wars, catastrophes, and ultimately its own slow and painful self-destruction. It had produced things of exquisite and lasting beauty as well.”

“The clock in the church tower said 4.32, as it had done for three hundred years. It was right once a day and that was better than no clock at all.”