Father was an atheist; he had even joined the Skeleton Army - a club of men who went about in masks or black faces, with ribald placards and a brass band, to make war upon the Salvation Army.

Mothers are inscrutable beings to their sons, always.

Holiness was always something richly dim.

Mothers are inscrutable beings to their sons, always. ("The Higgler")

Blood is thicker than water, I know, but it's unnatural stuff to drink so much of. (“The Wife Of Ted Wickham”)

Humph, ' he said, with a disagreeable air, 'the universe does its work very quietly.' (“The Bogey Man”)

To connect is to dissolve the imaginary pyramids of artificial privilege.

The hardest decision of the day is always the first decision you must make. It's the choice you make to TRY.

If you take Christ out of Christianity, Christianity is dead. If you remove grace out of the gospel, the gospel is gone. If the people do not like the doctrine of grace, give them all the more of it.

I'm nothing if not an optimist.

Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies! Oh look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

You okay in there?" "No, I'm hanging from a closet rod.

I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.

I see no reason why I should not live on indefinitely just as I have done, and on the whole I am more comfortable here than in Purgatory, a place that I imagine to be like the suburbs of London.

The world is his who has money to go over it.

I can work 24 hours a day and not have it bother me.