“As one does a bear riding a bicycle. One sees it so rarely.(Spoken by Volger, on Deryn)”

“Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.”

“Did you really think I was too fragile to know what Deryn was?""Fragile?" Volger looked about. "I hadn't thought so, but now I find you brooding in a bathroom. This doesn't speak well of your sturdiness.”

“The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.”

“Life is like riding a bicycle. You get nowhere standing up, so get up on that seat and go!”

“God only rarely reveals the future. When he does so, it is for one reason: it's a future that was written so as to be altered.”