I owe a fortune in student loans, and after I got my degree in education and tried to apply it, I caught on that the emperor had no clothes— - Tim Powers

Lepidopt didn’t know if he was one of those pipe smokers who always had the thing in his mouth and talked around the stem, or one of the ones who was always fiddling with it in his hands, tamping it and relighting it and shoving a pipe cleaner down it; they were different sorts of men.

The church has become a more...exclusive club since the founder’s day, it’s clear. No doubt the Devil is more hospitable.

Finehouse relaxed in his own seat. They had all certainly failed.
But maybe sometimes, he thought, it’s a good thing, on the whole, to have closed a knife that someone else had opened.