Early Riser

Stay close, do what I say and make as many mistakes as you want – just never the same one twice.

I can hardly contain my indifference.

Can I ask why?" "Why what?" "Why you're something you're not?" "We're all something we're not," he said. "Every one of us is stuck between the person we want to be and the person we can be and there doesn't have to be a why. All things have to do is feel right.

She used to only play "Help Yourself," but now she only plays "Delilah." Is that normal? "It's not unusual.

And he gave me a smile that looked as though it had come from a hastily-read handbook on cultivating personal charm.

Don't underestimate mediocrity... Lasting happiness, I've found, only really favors the unadventurous.

One was our own Mother Fallopia, tall, elegant, austere, and with a habit so black she looked like a nun-shaped hole in the air.

... plans are all well and good in the Summer, but in the Winter it's wise to simply have an objective.' 'I thought we were meant to make a plan and stick to it?' 'Events move fast,' he said, 'and you need on-the-hoof flexibility to ensure the plan doesn't get in the way of the goal.' It actually seemed like quite good advice.

You a brave person?' 'I don't know.' 'You'll find out soon enough.

Of all the Winter Service Industries, the Winter Consul was the most dangerous. Few who joined expected to last out the decade, yet recruitment was never much of a problem. You didn't find the job, they said, it found you. No-one ever who entered the Winter voluntarily wasn't trying to leave something behind.

Everyone needs dreams,’ she said simply. ‘If you don’t have them, they can’t come true.

So when did you first consider a Winter career?’ asked Williams, who seemed chatty. ‘Oh, eight seconds ago,’ I replied.

If you look into someone else’s dreams, all you ever find are nightmares.

Feedback loops, echo chambers, circular reinforcement. All could play a part in escalating the utterly imaginary to the level of reality, sometimes with fatal consequences.

Staying awake in the winter requires considerable pantry, a lot of luck, warm clothes, and several dozen good books.

You’re not any of those. But I can’t figure out if you’re a clever person pretending to be thick, a thick person pretending to be clever, or just a chancer stumbling through the Winter without any sort of plan or thought at all.

You’re a liability and a wild card and trouble seems to follow you like a homesick spaniel.

You’ll also be pleased to know that no resident has been eaten in their sleep here for almost thirty-seven years.

It’s important to collect evidence,’ she said, ‘even if disproved. That’s how science works. Being proved wrong and then advancing. If I’m proved wrong a lot, I must be making headway, right?

We're all something we're not,' he said. 'Every one of us is stuck between the person we want to be and the person we can be. And there doesn't have to be a why. All things have to do is feel right.

Oh, hullo, Worthing,’ he said in a cheery manner. ‘How are things?’ ‘Outlook stormy with a chance of scattered death moving in randomly from all points of the compass.

You’ll know the beginning easily enough; it’s when it all started going weird.

She and I had not exchanged an intelligent word since we first met five hours before, and the reason was readily explained: Mrs Tiffen was dead, and had been for several years.

There was a picture of Don Hector on the wall and next to the television was a phonograph with a large collection of cylinders. I looked through them. They were a mixture of old favourites – Dark Side of the Moon, Rumours, Ziggy Stardust – mixed with jazz and a little Puccini.

Events move fast,’ he said, ‘and you need on-the-hoof flexibility to ensure the plan doesn’t get in the way of the goal.

May the Spring embrace you‘, ‘And embrace you, too.

at least this way I never get to be a nightwalker, lumbering around the Winter, eating beetles and curtains and people and stuff

Gaps. I loathe gaps. Gaps in doors, gaps in windows, gaps in bathroom tiles, long gaps between sequels to books. But you know which gaps I hate the most?

I don’t back out of a long and happy make-believe union just when things start getting rocky