“Omens were all very well, but sometimes it would help if people just wrote things down.”

“Witches knew that mysterious omens were around all the time. The world was always very nearly drowning in mysterious omens. You just had to pick the one that was convenient.”

“Well, very splendid and very frightening. But splendid things are often frightening. Sometimes, it's the fright that makes them splendid at all.”

“So very Russian," people around were murmuring. That they did meant this was an audience pretty low down on the scale of sophistication, otherwise they would be saying, "Just like us, isn't it?”

“Obviously the name of the show is a joke, a friend of mine gave it to me. But some people are very literal. Sometimes you see things like "He's not the smartest man in the world! All he does is drink." Well, they're not listening very closely.”

“I giggled and he took it very seriously and wrote everything down. I thought it was going too well, I was doing too well, it was going to look like nothing was wrong. I’m not this great! I wanted to say. Really, I’m a wreck, help! But I couldn’t speak up. I smiled and tried to look brilliant.”