“You're not going to tell me they built fifty-foot-high killer golems, are you?""Only a man would think of that.It's our job," said Moist. "If you don't think of fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will.”

“He was going to be armed with his wand - which, just now, felt like nothing more than a narrow strip of wood - against a fifty-foot-high, scaly, spike-ridden, fire-breathing dragon.”

“You better be careful, I've got a ladle. You never know what a trained killer can do with an innocent-looking kitchen utensil.I don't think you're a trained killer.So should I be insulted that you think I'm an amateur killer?”

“Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a dam twelve feet high and six feet wide in two days, all you would need to build Boulder Dam is a beaver sixty-eight feet long with a fifty-one-foot tail?""Where would you find a beaver that big?" grumbled the Humbug as his pencil point snapped."I'm sure I don't know," he replied, "but if you did, you'd certainly know what to do with him.”

“Are you the same? Is it only afterward that you think of what you should have said, the killer response,the put-down that would make them stay put down?”

“There's an old saying," Buck said. "A hundred things can go wrong in a holdup, and if you can think of fifty of them you're a damn genius.”