A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and curdy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery.

The rules as I take it, if rules can be spoken of in such a matter, are two only. The first is, “Disrealise everything, and never forget that whatever art is, it is not nature.” The second is the same as that just given, “Try all things if you like: but if you try the exceptional, the abnormal the unconventional, remember that you try it at your own peril, and you must either make a great success or an intolerable and inexcusable failure.

He wanted to usher her into the flat but the bin bag made the action potentially dangerous, so rather than sending her flailing off back down the staircase he went on in.

It has all been foretold, forelived, Tridib being, so to speak, the novel's ur-imagination, ur-hero, ur-narrator.