“If all else fails, we will simply have to drug our attendants, overpower the guards, raise the oppressed peasants to arms, and take over the government.”

Sekhmet crawled onto Ramses’s lap and began to purr. ‘The creature oozes like a furry slug,’ said Ramses, eyeing it without favor.

Children, I feel, are as much entitled to privacy as human beings.

Humor is an excellent method of keeping a tight rein on unproductive displays of emotion.

The trouble with unknown enemies is that they are so difficult to identify.

The way to get on with a cat is to treat it as an equal – or even better, as the superior it knows itself to be.

I do hope you have some money. I’m getting tired of hitting people.

Emerson,’ I said, choosing my words with care, ‘it is a sheer drop from the cleft down to the base of the cliff. If you are bent on breaking your arm or your leg or your neck or all three, find a place closer to home so we won’t have to carry you such a distance.

I would not be at all surprised to find that it was for gold that Cain committed the first murder. (It happened a very long time ago, and Holy Writ, though no doubt divinely inspired, is a trifle careless about details. God is not a historian).

I knew the answer, and–of course–so did Ramses. He has superb breath control and always gets in ahead of me.

The only way to do it is to do it: by writing, writing, writing.

I can do a book in three months if I spend all day, seven days a week at it and, in fact, I work better that way.

Spring is always cruel, with its false promise of resurrection.

People who relate what they believe to be new and startling information like to have such information received with exclamations of astonishment and admiration.

There is nothing sadder than the cheerful letters of the dead, expressing hopes that were never fulfilled, ambitions that were never achieved, dreams cut off before they could come to fruition.

I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to – mostly the latter.

I do, however, think it would be difficult to write books I don’t like to read.

If you cannot hold me in your arms, then hold my memory in high regard. And if I cannot be in your life, then at least let me live in your heart.

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjugated races to possess arms.

And I would lie on your chest for hours and dream about the world in your arms but your thoughts were in another world.

We have a tendency to fall for broken things thinking we can fix them What if we just gathered all the pieces into our arms and loved them just as they are?

Peaceful dreams find me pull me from reality in their arms I land.

And maybe my arms have grown too tired to hold this but my eyes will never stop searching for miracles.

Just you and only you. You fit so perfectly in my arms, in my bed and between my legs.

In the world full of chaos, being in your arms is the only place where I can find peace.