Don’t lap your soup like that, you look like a dog.

You still interested in a writing job? he asked. … Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear shit in the woods? Or, as one of the guys had said a few weeks before, Does the Pope shit in the woods? A writing job. “Yeah,” was all she could say.

“It’s an early peddler. She sings, ‘Bread, fresh baked this morning. Bread, warm from the oven.’ ” Kerf sounded sentimental. “Helps us!” Alaria’s desperate scream was so shrill my ears rang with it. “Help us, oh help us! We are trapped!” When she finally stopped shrieking, for lack of breath, my ears were ringing. I strove to hear the bread-woman’s song or the clopping hooves, but I heard nothing. “She is gone,” Vindeliar said sadly. “We are in a city,” Kerf declared. “Only cities have breadmongers at dawn, selling wares in the street.”

[…]for say what you will about accent being the only element of English verse, any one with a sensitive ear must be conscious that the harmony of a line depends upon some other rhymical element than mere accent.