Jin looked both ways for the Quicksilver Dragon before crossing the canal.

Dreams of success often get in the way of actual success.

Writers are highly resistant to reality. Just as well or the human condition would go undocumented.

A jewelled garden the envy of Aladdin's cave spilled across the courtyard.

The two old men were as still as the stone bench on which they sat, as though their lengthy communion with the element had turned them into statues.

His shout was a syllable so ancient and powerful that Saffiyah's mind instantly censored it.

How is something authorised as 'feng shui compliant' he wondered. Is there a Chinese Ministry of Magic?

Nobody can be lucky all the time, so when your luck deserts you in some fashiondon't think you've been abandoned in your prime, but rather that you're saving up your ration.

Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.

You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you. You will know. You will know when it's right.

We should learn from the snail: it has devised a home that is both exquisite and functional.

His aim was the glory of God, but the glory of Philip pleased him too.

In Presence, there is no outcome. It is our involvement in the outcome that keeps us imprisoned in an imagined future. In Presence, there is only now.

It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears.

Get it wrong, and we call it a cult. Get it right, in the right time and the right place, and maybe, for the next few millennia, people won't have to go to work on your birthday.

But to be part of helping create a character and be a part of something from the beginning - the excitement of it - it doesn't get any better.

Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow, And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow; Thou canst help time to furrow me with age, But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage.