Jocelyn

“Offer me?" A shrill note of indignation entered her voice. "Young man, there are three things that make Britain great. The first is our inability at playing sports."
How does that make Britain great?"
"Despite the certainty of loss, we try anyway with the absolute conviction that this year will be the one, regardless of all evidence to the contrary!"
I raised my eyebrows, but that simply meant I could see my blood more clearly, so looked away and said nothing.
"The second," she went on, "is the BBC. It may be erratic, tabloid, under-funded and unreliable, but without the World Service, obscure Dickens adaptions, the Today Program and Doctor Who, I honestly believe that the cultural and communal capacity of this country would have declined to the level of the apeman, largely owing to the advent of the mobile phone!"
"Oh," I said, feeling that something was expected. "Oh" was enough.
"And lastly, we have the NHS!"
"This is an NHS service?" I asked incredulously.
"I didn't say that, I merely pointed out that the NHS makes Britain great. Now lie still.”
― Kate Griffin, A Madness of Angels

“If more people recognized the difference between friendship and mere attraction, and how love must partake of both to prosper, I expect there'd be more happy people.”
― Sherwood Smith, Crown Duel

“Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Never underestimate the ridiculous things that have been done in the name of religious-semantic obscurity.”
― Kate Griffin, A Madness of Angels