Neil Gaiman

A pot of coffee arrived on a small silver tray, with two cups.

“Greek coffee,” said the proprietor, who had brought it.

“Yes. Thanks. I did ask for a couple of minutes...”

“Is very hot,” said the proprietor. “Very hot coffee. Strong. Greek. Not Turkish.”

Daisy looked up at him with the kind of expression that Jesus might have given someone who had just explained that he was probably allergic to bread and fishes, so could He possibly do him a quick chicken salad: there was pity in that expression, along with almost infinite compassion.

... the beast made the noise of a cat being shampooed, a lonely wail of horror and outrage, of shame and defeat.

Don’t you start going all British on me. I know what I’m sayin’. You and him, you both cut from the same cloth. I remember your father sayin’ to me, Callyanne, my boys, they stupider than—you know, it don’t matter what he actually said, but the point is, he said it about both of you.

“Might get Anansi mad,” said Monkey. “Very bad idea that. Get Anansi mad, you never in any more stories.”

“Anansi’s dead,” said Fat Charlie.

“Dead there,” said Monkey. “Maybe. But dead here? That’s another stump of grubs entirely.”

Grahame Coats/Stoat: "Absatively."

So that’s how they find Anansi the next morning, when his wife and his sons come down to the pea patch by the old breadfruit tree: all stuck to the tar man, and dead as history.

They weren’t surprised to see him like that.

Those days, you used to find Anansi like that all the time.

Tiger roared in anger, and Charlie took the roar and wound his song around it. Then he did the roar himself, just like Tiger had done it. Well, the roar began just as Tiger’s roar had, but then Charlie changed it, so it became a really goofy sort of roar, and all the creatures watching from the rocks started to laugh. They couldn’t help it. Charlie did the goofy roar again. Like any impersonation, like any perfect caricature, it had the effect of making what it made fun of intrinsically ridiculous. No one would ever hear Tiger roar again without hearing Charlie’s roar underneath it. “Goofy sort of a roar,” they’d say.

The door opened.

“Don’t you knock?” asked Fat Charlie.

“No,” said the policeman. “We don’t, actually.”

There’s another version of the story where they talk Anansi into the cookpot, too. The stories are all Anansi’s, but he doesn’t always come out ahead.

“The ties of blood,” said Spider, “are stronger than water.”

“Water’s not strong,” objected Fat Charlie.

“Stronger than vodka, then. Or volcanoes. Or, or ammonia.”

It was England in the autumn; the sun was, by definition, something that only happened when it wasn't cloudy or raining.