Nation

They didn't know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you've got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you're alive, when you really shouldn't be.

No more words. We know them all, all the words that should not be said. But you have made my world more perfect.

Don't look back!" "Why not?" "Because I just did! Run faster!

Even our fears make us feel important, because we fear we might not be.

The world is a globe — the farther you sail, the closer to home you are.

It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.

Life is a trick, and you get one chance to learn it.

What did they feed the lions and tigers with in the ark, sir?

They obeyed, as wise men do when a woman puts her foot down . . .

Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you.

You are very clever," said the old man shyly. "I would like to eat your brains, one day." For some reason the books of etiquette that Daphne's grandmother had forced on her didn't quite deal with this. Of course, silly people would say to babies, "You're so sweet I could gobble you all up!" but that sort of nonsense seemed less funny when it was said by a man in war paint who owned more than one skull. Daphne, cursed with good manners, settled for "It's very kind of you to say so.

I notice you didn't laugh, Mr. Black! No, Your Majesty. We are forbidden to laugh at the things kings say, sire, because otherwise we would be at it all day.

Light died in the west. Night and tears took the Nation. The star of Water drifted among the clouds like a murderer softly leaving the scene of the crime.

Who'd want a pony when you could have the whole universe? It was far more interesting and you didn't have to muck it out once a week.

Oh, well...up until now it had been a good day, in a horrible kind of way.

Religion is not an exact science. Sometimes, of course, neither is science.

That’s what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there’s food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don’t have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don’t fit the way we want the world to be.

The most important thing was that time had passed, pouring thousands of soothing seconds across the island. People need time to deal with the now before it runs away and becomes the then.

When much is taken, something is returned.

You are very clever," said the old man shyly. "I would like to eat your brains, one day.

It was, according to the history books, the fastest coronation since Bubric the Saxon crowned himself with a very pointy crown on a hill during a thunderstorm, and reigned for one and a half seconds.

It takes an unusual man to make up a hymn in a hurry, but such a man was Captain Roberts. He knew every hymn in The Antique and Contemporary Hymn Book, and sang his way through them loudly and joyously when he was on watch, which had been one of the reasons for the mutiny.

Science is not interested in what stands to reason.

He'd missed dogs. Dogs added something that even people didn't, and one of the dogs was sitting by his feet, here in the darkness and the gentle rain. It wasn't bothered much about the rain or what might be out there on the unseen sea, but Mau was a warm body moving about in a sleeping world and might at any moment do something that called for runnung around and barking. Occasionally it looked up at him adoringly and made a slobbery gulping noise which possibly meant "Anything you say, boss!

Captain Roberts went to Heaven, which wasn't everything that he'd expected, and as the receding water gently marooned the wreck of the Sweet Judy on the forest floor, only one soul was left alive. Or possibly two, if you like parrots.

The Universe isn’t just a light show, they keep it running during the day too.

She felt better for all that. A good shouting at somebody always makes you feel better and in control, especially if you aren't.

[...]And his head is on fire with new things[...]he called himself the little blue hermit, scuttling across the sand in search of a new shell, but now he looks at the sky and knows that no shell will ever be big enough, ever.