Ok. Hørte dere det, unger? Ingen linje fra Ludwig II til nasjonalsosialismen. Ifølge moren deres. Hvem vil ha is?

Tja. Goethe var sikkert litt av en kar, og det er vakkert og har lyder og rytme og alt mulig, men hindret det folk i å bli nazister, Nina? Hva? Og er det teater? Det spør jeg meg selv om. Er det, når alt kommer til alt, teater?

"I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish."

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

"Varvara Andrejevna, jeg er i det hele tatt motstander av demokrati." Han rødmet idet han sa det. "Menneskene er i utgangspunktet ulike, og det er det ingenting å gjøre med. Demokratiets prinsipp tilsidesetter rettighetene til de klokeste, mest b-begavede og arbeidsomme og gjør dem avhengig av den avstumpede viljen til de dumme, talentløse og dovne, f-for disse vil alltid være i flertall. Hvis våre landsmenn først legger av seg råskapen og gjør seg fortjent til betegnelsen borgere, da kan vi kanskje begynne å tenke på et parlament."

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you on to a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.

Fattigdom og stolthet er uatskillelige brødre, inntil en av dem nødvendigvis tar livet av den andre.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men, he said. It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men - it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good or evil.

"All this happened, more or less"

Vi satte oss i stuen alle fire og begynte sporenstreks å kose oss.

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renenwed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.

All the children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though that is what they are.

And if heaven was on the other side of a black hole dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren't, or people would notice.

Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby, and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn't know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr L Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.

All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.