Expecting Someone Taller (1987)

• It was irritating to have one's physical shortcomings pointed out quite so plainly twice in one evening, once by a beautiful girl and once by a dying badger.
• In fact, as they will be delighted to tell you, Taunton is no longer a one-horse town
  these days,they have a bicycle as well.

Who's Afraid of Beowulf? (1988)

• I'm an archaeologist,' said Hildy. 'I dig up the past.'
  The King raised an eyebrow. 'You mean you refresh old quarrels and keep alive old grievances? Surely not.
• No, no,' said Hildy, 'I dig up ancient things buried in the earth. Things that belonged to people who lived hundreds of years ago. As she said this, she began to feel uncomfortable. She had forgotten about the brooch.
  'Do you really?' said the King. 'We used to call that grave-robbing.
• The King rose slowly to his feet and beckoned to the wizard, who had been sitting outside the circle of the firelight, apparently, trying to find a spell that would make a beer-can magically refill itself.

Flying Dutch (1991)

• I spy,' said the first mate, 'with my little eye, something beginning with W.
• Nobody took any notice. Even Jan Christian Duysberg had guessed that one back in the 1740s, and he had been thirty-four years old before he realised he was left-handed.
  • c.2
• Be my guest,' Vanderdecker said. You can watch a master liar at work, if you don't mind being an accomplice.
• 'Doesn't worry me,' Jane replied, I'm an accountant.
  • c. 8
• At any given time, ninety-nine-point-nine-five per cent of the human race are a confounded nuisance

Ye Gods! (1992)

• In the beginning was the Word. Nobody knows what it actually was, although it would be nice to think that it was 'Sorry.
  • c. 2
• The best definition of an immortal is someone who hasn't died yet.
• Jason squared his shoulders, drew the Sword of - I couldn't give a toss what it's supposed to be called, he said to himself, I shall call it Freckles - and took one step forward.

Overtime (1993)

Here Comes the Sun (1993)

• 'How many spectral warriors does it take to change a light-bulb?
  One, and a stepladder. At a pinch, of course, he could stand on a chair.'

Grailblazers (1994)

• The knight raises both eyebrows, like someone by Burne-Jones who's just trodden on something sharp. 'I am Prince Boamund, eldest son of King -'
  'Boamund?'
  'That's right,' says the knight, 'Boamund, eldest son of -'
  'How do you spell that?'
  Boamund looks worried. Where he comes from you can take advanced falconry, or you can take spelling; not both. Guess which one he opted for. - c. 1
• Boamund scratches his head. Imagine a knight by Alma-Tadema who's somehow managed to fall off the picture and is wondering how to get back in without breaking the glass.
  • c. 1
• That's it?' Boamund said.
  'Basically, yes,' the hermit replied. 'I've left out Helmut von Moltke and the Peace of Nikolsburg, and maybe I skated over the Benelux customs union a bit, but I think you've got the essentials there. Anything you're not sure about, you can look up in the book.' - c. 1
• Between the town of Giles, to the north of the Tomkinson Range, and Forrest in the Nullarbor Plain, lies the Great Victorian Desert. It is hot, arid, desolate and merciless; and whatever the Creator had in mind when He made it that way, it most certainly wasn't human beings.
  It's a really awful place to be if you've got toothache.
  • c. 3

Faust Among Equals (1994)

• Ronnie Bosch sat in his studio, stared long and hard at his drawing board, and groaned.
• It was, they told him, all part of a concept which was definitely going to be The Future as far as Hell Holdings was concerned.
  For reasons he couldn't quite grasp, but which he couldn't help but feel mildly flattering, they were going to call it EuroBosch.
  • c. 2

Djinn Rummy (1995)

• 'Genies rarely have nightmares, for the same reason that elephants don't usually worry about being trampled underfoot. With the possible exception of bottles, there's nothing in the cosmos large enough or malicious enough to frighten them, or stupid enough to try.'
• '...and we have already seen how insurance is like a pyramid -
  (Huge, incomprehensible, hideously expensive, completely unnecessary and specifically designed only to be of benefit to you once you're dead?)'

My Hero (1996)

• 'He didn't smile - he was from Yorkshire, after all - but in some inner chamber of his heart he was satisfied.'
• 'Tact comes as naturally to full-bore handguns as, say, ice-skating to African elephants, but there comes a time when an exceptional individual is prepared to stand up and break the mould.'
• 'Luck, like a Russian car, generally only works if you push it.'

Paint Your Dragon (1996)

• Besides, [Saint] George pointed out, dragons burn towns and demand princesses as ransom.
  The dragons, referring to the Siege of Jerusalem, the Sack of Constantinople and a thousand years of dynastic marriages, said, Look who's talking.
  • c. 4
• [...] the dragon got three cartsful of angry letters from the Pope (which he dismissed as a load of bulls) [...]
  • ( c. 4
• Here and there a doorway or low arch concealed the occasional mugger, rapist or lawyer.
  • c. 7
• Vote!' [Saint] George rolled his eyes. 'This is an assassination, not a debating society.' - c. 7
• Like, there's these new fundamentalist religious fanatics, some name like Meek Militant Action. Their aim's to inherit the Earth, provided nobody objects.' - c. 12
• Good guys is just a fancy way of saying Us. Bad guys is only ever Them.' -
  • c. 12
• Talking to yourself is a sign of madness. Talking to yourself, dead, is class.'
  • c. 12
• Jeez, for a superior intelligence, you must be just plain dumb,' he said.
  • c. 19

Only Human (1999)

• Here we go, surfing the Net again, something done by humans and very gullible fish.

Snow White and The Seven Samurai (1999)

He'd turned into a handsome prince. 'Turn me back!' he yelled hysterically, staring at the mirror. 'That's awful! I don't want to be one of those things!' 'Tough,' replied Little Red Riding Hood with a grin, and as she advanced towards him, she produced from the pocket of her dainty scarlet cape a pair of handcuffs and a nasty-looking hypodermic. 'That's the way it goes, buster. And you'll have the satisfaction of knowing it's all in the aid of medical research.'

Nothing But Blue Skies (2001)

• If you hadn't noticed, I'm the pub loony around here. This is my turf, and if there's any gibbering to be done, I'm the one who does it. If you want to gibber, find another bar.

Falling Sideways (2002)

• You want the short version. Okay, then: shit happens. Does that answer all your question? Thought not. Now, if you shut your face and let me tell this my way, we might actually get somewhere. Thank you.
  • the spokesclone, p. 319

• You poor suckers [mammals]: you've got all this horrible stuff to get through somehow so obviously there's got to be an incentive, or at least some kind of fix for you to get addicted to. That's love: possibly the sneakiest trick ever played on any variety of life form by a notoriously conniving Universe. You do all these dismal, soul-destroying things because you get attached to each other.
  • the spokesclone, p. 322

The Portable Door (2003)

• Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]"

You Don't Have To Be Evil To Work Here, But It Helps (2006)

• I didn't find out she was actually the Queen of the Fey until some time later. Bit of a shock, but I think we could've made a go of it, if she hadn't been so dead set on wiping out the human race.

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