Heath

“Our position as the policing agency within fiction gave us licensed access to abstract technology. One blast from the eraserhead in Bradshaw’s rifle and the Minotaur would be reduced to the building blocks of his fictional existence: text and a bluish mist—all that is left when the bonds that link text to meaning are severed.”
― Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten

“The newspapers this year were campaigning for a “safe and sane” Fourth. One hundred and eighty-five Philadelphians had been seriously injured in 1915 by fireworks, cannons, firearms, gunpowder, torpedoes, and toy pistols.”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“Milk the goats now, Tiffany! Now, Tiffany, d’you hear! The trusting creatures look to you! They wait for you! Tiffany milks the goats. Do it, Tiffany! The hands know how, the mind will remember and grow stronger, Tiffany!”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“The public house is virtually the country’s last unassailable place, now that so many churches lock their doors. For hundreds of years it has occupied a unique position in our culture. What’s the one thing every pub is supposed to have?’ ‘I don’t know.’ Land scratched at his chin. ‘At least two brands of bad lager?’ ‘A welcoming hearth created by centuries of tradition. Wasn’t it Hilaire Belloc who once said “When you have lost your inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England”?”
― Christopher Fowler, The Victoria Vanishes