You will learn nothing of importance from this story except, perhaps, how to die; but then, you were born knowing that and in any case it only has to… - Kyril Bonfiglioli

The coffee having arrived (how hard it is to write without the ablative absolute!) we guzzled genteelly for a while...

Somewhere in the trash he reads Martland has read that heavy men walk with surprising lightness and grace; as a result he trips about like a portly elf hoping to be picked up by a leprechaun.

I don't much care about tea-drinking in the afternoon; in the morning the stuff Jock brings to me in bed is like that Nepenthe which the wife of Thone gave to Jove-born Helena, but in the p.m. it always makes me think of Ganges mud in which crocodiles have been coupling.