“He..." Richard began. "The marquis. Well, you know, to be honest, he seems a little bit dodgy to me."Door stopped. The steps dead-ended in a rough brick wall. "Mm," she agreed. "He's a little bit dodgy in the same way that rats are a little bit covered in fur.”
“How old are you?" asked Door. Richard was pleased she had asked; he would never have dared."As old as my tongue," said Hunter, primly, "and a little older than my teeth.”
“I think I fell in love with her, a little bit. Isn't that dumb? But it was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you. I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to notice me. And then she stopped walking. Under the moon, she stopped. And looked at us. She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life.”
“One thing concerns me a little, nick has a girlfriend, right? Well, how do you think she'll feel about all of this? He probed. He had this look on his face that he always had when I'm doing something a little bit naughty. You know, something you can get away with, but it's still a bit dodgy.”
“What," asked Mr Croup, "do you want?""What," asked the Marquis de Carabas, a little more rhetorically, "does anyone want?""Dead things," suggested Mr Vandemar. "Extra teeth.”
“We were expecting to see you at the market.""Yes. Well. Some people thought I was dead. I was forced to keep a low profile.""Why . . . why did some people think you were dead?"The marquis looked at Richard with eyes that had seen too much and gone too far. "Because they killed me.”
“You'll think this is a bit silly, but I'm a bit--well, I have a thing about birds.""What, a phobia?""Sort of.""Well, that's the common term for an irrational fear of birds.""What do they call a rational fear of birds, then?”