Philip Reeve

I don't think we are cut out to be evil sorcerers, brothers," said Fentongoose. "If we were truly evil, we would not feel such sorrow at the deaths of our friends. We would just go, 'Ha! Ha! Ha!' or something.

If God could do things like that, the world wouldn__ look the way it does. He can__ reach down and change things. He can__ stop any of us doing what we choose to do.'__hat use is he then?__enone shrugged. 'He sees. He understands. He knows how you__e feeling. He knows how Theo felt. He knows how it feels to die. And when we die, we go to him.''To the Sunless Country, you mean? Like ghosts?_'Oenone shook her head patiently. 'Like children. Do you remember what it was like to be a tiny child? When everything was possible and everything was given to you, and you knew that you were safe and loved, and the days went on forever? When we die, it will be like that again. That__ how it is for Theo now, in heaven.

Sometimes, on our way through the world, we meet someone who touches our heart in a way others don't.

Godshawk looked surprised, the way that people generally do when you ask them philosophical questions in shrubberies in the middle of the night.

Her face was very beautiful, he thought. He hadn't been sure before, but he was now. The mind that lived behind it made it beautiful, the same way that the flame inside a lantern makes the lantern beautiful.

What Caul liked most about Tom was his kindness. Kindness was not valued back in Grimsby, where the older boys were encouraged to torment the younger ones, who would grow up to torment another batch of youngsters in their turn. __ood practice for life,_ Uncle said. __ard knocks, that__ all the world__ about!_ But maybe Uncle had never met anyone like Tom, who was kind to other people and seemed to expect nothing more than kindness in return.

Friends don't leave friends behind to wash dishes for yetis!

As a child I always steered clear of science fiction, but in the autumn of 1977, the bow-wave of publicity for the first 'Star Wars' movie had already reached me, so I was eager for anything science-fictional.

He was going to miss everything. But he guessed that was how everybody always felt. Everyone was losing things, leaving things behind, clinging to old memories as they rushed into the future. Everyone was a passenger on a runaway train.

My name," the boy said importantly, "is Stacey de Lacey." "But that's a girl's name!" blurted Oliver. Stacey de Lacey's face turned a dark shade of red. "Silence!" he shouted. "Stacey is one of those names that can be for a boy or a girl! Like Hilary, or Leslie, or...um... Anyway...!

I am Nom-O-Tron,' said the machine, in a big, boomy voice, so loud that Astra was afraid her mum and dad or some other grown-ups would hear and come to see who was sneaking a bedtime snack. 'Shhh!' she said. 'Have you got any biscuits?

If only Myrtle would pay attention to the Boy's Own Journal, Blackwood's Magazine, etc., she would know that these creatures were Threls, who come from a worldlet called Threlfall on the far side of the asteroid belt. This Threlfall is a cheerless, chilly spot, and the whole history and religion of the Threls has been concerened with their quest to knit a nice woolly coverlet for it.

The trouble with space is, there's so much of it.An ocean of blackness without any shore.A neverending nothing.And here, all alone in the million billion miles of midnight, is one solitary moving speck. A fragile parcel filled with sleeping people and their dreams.

And now he was dead, his soul fled down to the Sunless Country and his body lying cold in the cold mud, somewhere in the city's wake.

It__ called the Pyxis,_ said Raven. __on__ let the fancy name intimidate you. It just means __ox_ in one of those Old Earth languages, Roman or Spanish or Klingon_

I have had it with these dumb cakes on this dumb spaceship!