“Big fat hairy monkey, hands a couple of octaves wide?”

“I’ve got nothing but the greatest respect for Mrs. Gogol,” said Granny. “A fine woman. But talks a bit too much. If I was her, I’d have had a couple of big nails right through that thing by now.”“You would, too,” said Nanny. “It’s a good thing you’re good, ain’t it.”

“It was a shack, somewhere out on the outskirts of the Plains town of Scrote. Scrote had a lot of outskirts, spread so widely-a busted cart here, a dead dog there-that often people went through it without even knowing it was there, and really it only appeared on the maps because cartographers get embarrassed about big empty spaces.”

“Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.”

“Only Ron's dog was watching William. He considered that it had, for a dog, a very offensive and knowing look.A couple of months ago someaone had tried to hand William the old story about there being a dog in the city that could talk. (...) The dog in front of William didn't look as if it could talk, but it DID look as if it would swear.”

“It's amazing how good governments are, given their track records in almost every other field, at hushing up things like alien encounters. One reason may be that the aliens themselves are too embarrassed to talk about it. It's not known why most of the space-going races of the universe want to undertake rummaging in Earthling underwear as a prelude to formal contact. But representatives of several hundred races have taken to hanging out, unsuspected by one another, in rural corners of the planet and, as a result of this, keep on abducting other would-be abductees. Some have been in fact abducted while waiting to carry out an abduction on a couple of aliens trying to abduct the aliens who were, as a result of misunderstood instructions, trying to form cattle into circles and mutilate crops. The planet Earth is now banned to all alien races until they can compare notes and find out how many, if any, real humans they have actually got. It is gloomily suspected that there is only one - who is big, hairy, and has very large feet. The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head.”

“She was convinced that she was anorexic, because every time she looked in the mirror she did indeed see a fat person.”