“The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.”

“We may even find out why the duck-billed platypus.**Not why is it anything. Just why it is.”

“It was like rising slowly out of a pink cloud, or a magnificent dream which, try as you might, drains out of your mind as the daylight shuffles in, leaving a terrible sense of loss; nothing, you know instinctively, nothing you're going to experience for the rest of the day is going to be one half as good as that dream.”

“The storm was really giving it everything it had. This was its big chance. It had spent years hanging around the provinces, putting in some useful work as a squall, building up experience, making contacts, occasionally leaping out on unsuspecting shepherds or blasting quite small oak trees. Now an opening in the weather had given it an opportunity to strut its hour, and it was building up its role in the hope of being spotted by one of the big climates.”

“A month went by quickly. It didn't want to hang around.”

“This somewhat surprised Dodger; no one had offered him a prayer before, as far as he could recall. The idea that he might have one was, on this chilly night, a welcome warmth. Cuddling that to his bosom, he led Onan up the longs stairs to bed.”

“A camel in distress isn’t a shy creature. It doesn’t hang around in bars, nursing a solitary drink. It doesn’t phone up old friends and sob at them. It doesn’t mope, or write long soulful poems about Life and how dreadful it is when seen from a bedsitter. It doesn’t know what angst is.”