“I owed no morality to those who would extort it by force”

“Those who lead double lives do so because they can only count that far”

“He said he didn’t like my kind and I was filled with the delirious expectation that he would identify me as a common species - that there were others like myself. I controlled my excitement, but he seemed to sense it - his gaze wavered uncertainly.”

“Scientists used to do an experiment whereby a dog’s repeated reward for performing a task was unaccountably replaced by punishment. The dog, knowing it would be penalized for doing well or doing badly, would become melancholic and inactive. This and other unforeseeable results were funded by taxing up to sixty percent of people’s earnings. People became strangely melancholic and inactive”

“I crept in to find my father with pennies on his eyes - and looking closer I saw they were made of foil-covered chocolate. Of course I stole and ate them. Magical guilt? Tell me about it”

“I knew books could see people around them, they ground their tiny teeth, tried to rattle like windows, stories to tell.”

“The clerk tripped on the carpet, hit a window and went through, carrying with him a vase which had been on the sill. His skull broke like the vase and the vase broke like his skull, and both burst forth water mainly, and from the vase some flowers. If I could choose a death I’d make it something like that, except I’d add a good woman and some lard.”