“This is the recipe. Take a bunch of musk-antler bangers and skin them, taking no heed whatsoever of their screams. Carefully preserve the skins.”

“It was a simple little dress of almond-green cashmere, with great gilded ceramic buttons, and the low back was filled in with a wrought-iron portcullis.”

“‘It’s too beautiful to cut,’ he said. ‘Let’s wait a moment.’
‘Procrastination,’ said Chick, ‘is a prelude in a minor key.’”