Things just seem so much better in theory than in practice.

How was is that life never worked out the way it did in his head?

Poison. he said, deadpan. That's an unusual name to give your child. You must love her very much. She's a treasure. Bram agreed, blithely ignoing the sarcasm. .... Then went a few dozen feet in silence, until they were out of eaarshor of the gaurd. She's a treasure. Poison mimicked, and Bram burst out laughing.

If there was one thing worse than being cheated, it was being cheated by someone who referred to themselves in the third person.

Don't confuse contentment with happiness.

On reflection,’ Crake said to Frey, as they huddled behind an upturned table, ‘this wasn’t one of your better plans.

Well, wherever you go, whatever you do, you're still you. You can change your surroundings, start a new life, but you'll always fall into the same old patterns, make the same kind of friends, commit the same mistakes. The thing you need to change is yourself.

Once upon a time there was a young lady who lived in a marsh, and her name was Poison.

Some of us are born in the right place, and some of us have to go look for it.

Then a person has only one tale?” No, some have two or three separate ones or more,” Fleet said. “Some people have many tales. Sometimes they are linked into one big tale, sometimes they are utterly distinct. Most people do not have one at all.

Imagination is as close as we will ever be to godhead . . . for in imagination, we can create wonders.