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Because the Forest will always be there… and anybody who is Friendly with Bears can find it.
Ever met a Cautionary Valley child?” “No.” Jack shook his head sadly. “Sickeningly polite. A credit to their parents.
His real name was 1001111001000100111011100100, but that was tricky to remember and even harder to pronounce. Get the emphasis wrong on the seventh digit and it could mean “My prawns have asthma.”
“There are methods other than terror to instill discipline. We want to be like normal families, where threats of mutilation and a sorry end to achieve good behavior are met with a sarcastic, ‘Yeah, Dad, like way to go—you’re such a zoid, like, y’know. Tight.’”
“A life lived in fear is a life half lived. A life half lived is fear lived in half. A life half feared is fear half lived.” Some people have a way with words, but Hoffman wasn’t one of them.
“Only two months ago we successfully detained a ghoulie, a ghostie and a long-legged beastie.” “And the bump in the night?” asked Mr. Hoffman anxiously. “What about that?” “Ah,” returned Mary, scratching her chin thoughtfully, “no, the bump got away—
He was seven foot three, and she was six foot two and a quarter. It was a match made perhaps not in heaven but certainly nearer the ceiling.
“What does the Great Long Red-Legg’d Scissor-man look like?” asked Ashley. “Tall, red-legged—carries a huge pair of scissors.
incarcerated here, as were “Sasha the Slasher” and “Mr. Browner the Serial Drowner.” But the undisputed king of rhyme-inspired serial murder was Isle of Man resident Maximilian Marx, who went under the uniquely tongue-twisting epithet “Mad Max Marx, the Masked Manxman Axman.”
“I’m sorry, when I said ‘nuthouse,’ I actually meant ‘secure hospital.’” “It’s an easy mistake to make,” replied Dr. Maxilla cheerfully. “I often refer to my patients as ‘the loons.’”
“A great loss,” said Vômer sadly. “I was hoping to speak to her—was it unexpected?” “She was hit on the head with a shovel and then crushed by a falling beanstalk while being carried to safety by a bizarre genetic experiment gone horribly wrong,” replied Mandible thoughtfully, “so I think it’s safe to say it was unexpected—but what she would have wanted nonetheless.”
The other three orderlies who accompanied him are critical in the hospital.” “Critical?” “Yes. Don’t like the food, beds uncomfortable, waiting lists too long—usual crap. Other than that they’re fine.”
He despised Jack with the lingering hatred of an idle underachiever who had lost everything by his own stupidity and was now looking for someone to blame.
“Jack,” Josh sighed, “I don’t know anything. It could be the Easter Bunny for all I know.” “It’s not likely to be her,” replied Jack after a moment’s thought. “Kidnapping was never her MO.
the morning felt crisp and clean and sunny—the sort of morning that is generally reserved only for breakfast cereal commercials, where members of a nauseatingly bouncy nuclear family leap around like happy gazelles while something resembling wood shavings and latex paint falls in slow motion into a bowl.
“For all he’s seen of them, he said, it might as well be the Tooth Fairy who leased it.” “It won’t be her,” said Jack after giving the matter some thought. “She’s doing four years in Holloway over that regrettable incident with the pliers.”
“The owner of the flat?” “She’s dead—wallpapered over in the spare room. Good job, too. Despite the lumpiness, all the pattern matched up, and he’d bothered to line it first. No one does that anymore—not even the really class decorators.”
Word association. I want you to tell me the first word that comes into your head. Ready?” “Steady.” “We haven’t started yet. Okay, here we go: Jack?” “Yes?” “No, we’ve started now. Jack?” “Jill.” “Dish?” “Spoon.” “Boy?” “Blue.” “Baa, baa?” “Black sheep.” “Ring around the rosies?” “All fall down.” “Porridge?” “Bear.” “Nursery?” “Crime.” “Bluebeard?” “Crime.” “Humpty?” “Crime.” “Crime?” “Nursery.”
If he didn’t deal with her, the Jack Spratt series was likely to stop abruptly at the second volume. No third book and definitely no boxed set.
We have an ursine saying, Inspector, that goes something like this: ‘If you crap with your ass in the mountain stream, the poo won’t stick to your fur.’ Do you see what I mean?” “Not really.” Ed frowned. “Yes, I guess it loses something in the translation.”
I met Goldilocks when she came to my office to press for a law to allow lethal ursine self-defense.” “The ‘right to arm bears’ controversy?”
“Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition, Inspector.
“From my experience of government departments,” said Jack, “they couldn’t order the right size of staples, let alone succeed in anything as bizarrely complex as a murder and then subsequent cover-up.” “Yes,” agreed Parks sulkily, “it’s where that particular mainstay of conspiracy theory falls down. I hate to admit it, but governmental deviousness is usually better explained by incompetence, vanity and the need to protect one’s job at all costs.
Despite falling under the brief control of the Toast Marketing Board in 1987, Goliath resumed control of its own affairs and by the beginning of the fifth Thursday Next novel was once again ready to bully and cajole anyone who dared stand in its way.
“The Men in Green. Probably French. They’ve been jealous of le concombre anglais ever since the Hundred Years’ War, which was mostly about the right to buy and sell cucumbers in Europe.”
Jack trotted up the stairs, past the landing where the Easter Bunny had once held him at bay with a stream of hot lead from her M-16. It was over a decade ago, and she’d done her time. People were often fooled, he mused, by the one day in the year on which she did charitable work—the rest of the time she was the rabbit from hell.
Indeed, to the more unobservant alien, all mammals looked pretty much the same. “It’s the backbone that’s so confusing,” explained an alien spokesman when asked how a sheep might appear indistinguishable from a human in a woolly jumper.
“Because it is the way you are built—your bodies use networks to pass information; your veins and arteries are networks to nourish your bodies. Your mind is a complicated network of nerve impulses. It’s little wonder that networks dominate the planet—you have modeled your existence after the construction of your own minds.”
“What did she call you?” whispered Roger as they stood at the front door and waved good-bye. “I’m not sure,” Abigail whispered back. “Something about how her prawns have asthma.”
Most successful tooth fairy: The most active fairy ever in the Berkshire regional milk-tooth-harvesting department was Grundle Arturo Pipsqueak VIII (license number 6382/6Y), who collected a grand total of 6,732 milk teeth during 1996, at a total cost of £2,201.36p (less expenses), an average unit cost of 32.7p. The record remains unlikely to be beaten due to (1) the declining demand for maracas, the chief end-use product of milk teeth, and (2) stiff competition from Far Eastern tooth fairies, who can procure the same quantity for almost one-fiftieth the cost.
“Pippa Piper picked Peck over Pickle or Pepper?” exclaimed Mary incredulously. “Which of the Peck pair did Pippa Piper pick?” “Peter ‘pockmarked’ Peck of Palmer Park. He was the Peck that Pippa Piper picked.” “No, no,” returned Mary, “you’ve got it all wrong. Paul Peck is the Palmer Park Peck; Peter Peck is the pockmarked Peck from Pembroke Park. Pillocks. I’d placed a pound on Pippa Piper picking PC Percy Proctor from Pocklington.”
“It seems a very laborious setup for a pretty lame joke, doesn’t it?” mused Jack. “Yes,” agreed Mary, shaking her head sadly. “I really don’t know how he gets away with it.”
“There were seven thermocuclear devices?” queried Parks, who had latched on to Jack’s outlandish explanation without too much difficulty, as should you.
“And let me guess,” said Briggs. “The Easter Bunny as well?” “No,” replied Jack with a grunt as someone grabbed his wrist and pulled it up behind him, “she had nothing to do with it.”
“I’ll have your head on a platter for this!” “You’ll have to get in line.”
