“Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.

[Witness for the Prosecution, also published in The Hound of Death and Other Stories. ]”

“It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously”

“I have never had trouble with conflicting interpretations of my work. Once the story is published, it belongs to the reader.”

“Distances and days existed in themselves then; they all had a story. They were not barriers. If a person wanted to get to the moon, there was a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions-exactly which way to go and what to do to get there; it depended on whether you knew the story of how others before you had gone.”

“Of the men and women, the women were always the hardest of the band. They knew what the men knew but they also knew what the men would never know. They knew hard work and hunger, but they also knew childbirth and they knew the death of those children. They knew rape and the death of their men. They knew hatred and no one returns hate like a woman.”

“Uninfluenced by others, he never knew he influenced them; he had no idea they liked him.”

“But there was one other thing that the grown-ups also knew, and it was this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there.”

“If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?”

“For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.”

“He recognised its voice. It was the young hound which even a year ago had had no judgment and which, by the lights of the other hounds anyway, still had none. Maybe that’s what courage is, he thought.”