“Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.”

“Watching Castro, whose tiny hands looked like marshmallows, hoist the ball from his waist and through the hoop seemed like the human equivalent of an ant lifting fifty times its body weight.”

“If your pillow is six years old (apparently average age for a pillow) it has been estimated that one tenth of its weight will be made up of sloughed skin, living mites, dead mites and mite dung.”

“I'm a fifty-three-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer.”

“Gen stopped and talked to Simon Thaibault, who was reading One Hundred Years Of Solutide in Spanish. 'This will take me forever,' Thaibault said to Gen in French, 'Maybe a hundred years. At least I know I have the time.''Who knew that being kidnapped was so much like attending university?' Gen said.”

“Mum said earlier what a lovely dress you’re wearing.”Beryl’s eyebrows wriggled like two tiny tapeworms. “This?” she said. “But I’ve had this for years.”It was a beige dress that would have looked better on an eighty year-old. Any eighty-year-old, man or woman.“I think you’ve really grown into it,” Valkyrie said.“I always thought it was a little shapeless.”Valkyrie resisted the urge to say that was what she meant.”