I know,′ he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.

Does the occurrence of one impossible thing increase the likelihood of a second.

If you dazzle a man with green eyes, he’ll be so hypnotized that he won’t notice there is something inside the eyes spying on him.

Everybody has a story.

The Thames that goes north, south, east, and west, to finally go east, that seeps to one side and the other as it moves forward, that goes slow as it goes fast, that evaporates into the sky whilst meandering to the sea, is more about motion than about beginnings. If it has a beginning, it is located in a dark inaccessible place. Better study where it goes than where it comes from.

They were collectors of words the same way so many of the gravel diggers were collectors of fossils. They kept an ear constantly alert for them, the rare, the unusual, the unique.

I looked out into the dead garden. Against the fading light, my shadow hovered in the glass, looking into the dead room. What did she make of us? I wondered. What did she think of our attempts to persuade ourselves that this was life and that we were really living it?

Never let time be your master,′ Bellman told Verney when he asked about it. ‘If you want to do something, take it on. Time will always make itself.

It was like living entirely inside a book.

One of the best ways of avoiding his torments was to be ignorant about something and let him put you straight.