“Even with nougat, you can have a perfect moment.”

“The universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. There is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.”

“No more words. We know them all, all the words that should not be said. But you have made my world more perfect.”

“Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.”

“Everything’s a bit scruffy, but such a wonderful day that you have to be glad to be born and don’t even mind other people having been born either.”

“You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes – we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.”

“Mr Dibbler can even sell sausages to people that have bought them off him before … And a man who could sell Mr Dibbler’s sausages twice could sell anything”