“He stared at his feet. “I’m still very ignorant,” he said, “but at least I’m ignorant about really important things.”

“Cutangle: While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.”

“Can you swim?" said Victor. One of the cavern's rotting pillars crashed down behind them. From the pit itself came a terrible wailing. "Not very well," said Ginger. "Me neither," he said. The commotion behind them was getting worse. "Still," he said, taking her hand. "We could look on this as a great opportunity to improve really quickly.”

“The point I’m making,” said Yo-Less, “is that you’ve got to help your friends, right?” He turned to Johnny. ”Now, personally, I think you’re very nearly totally disturbed and suffering from psychosomatica and hearing voices and seeing delusions,” he said “and probably ought to be locked up in one of those white jackets with the stylish long sleeves. But that doesn’t matter, ’cause we’re friends.”

“Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.”

“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

“And then there was the young male walk. At least women swung only their hips. Young men swung everything, from the shoulders down. You have to try to occupy a lot of space. It makes you look bigger, like a tomcat fluffing his tail. The boys tried to walk big in self-defense against all those other big boys out there. I’m bad, I’m fierce, I’m cool, I’d like a pint of shandy and me mam wants me home by nine.”