R.A. Lafferty

I'm the guy who keeps it all going. If I weren't here, you wouldn't be here either. I know it all, I'm a smart-aleck. Loan-sharking and fencing. Any time I can't see you, you've had it.

They were down on Kentron-Kosmon, an insignificant world. And yet, in the middle of Space-Port there (a cow pasture rather; it wasn't much of a spaceport) there was a nice plaque of electrum and on it was lettered: This is the Exact Center of the Universe.

When we travel we find how greatly our boyhood dreams are outstripped by reality.

I'll break the spell or the science of her singing yet. As the only man left it devolves on me to do it.

As regards very small celestial bodies of a light-minded nature, the law of levity is allowed to supersede the law of gravity.

I've had enough of this place where they stuff you full of bull and then hunt you down and kill you every day.

The shapes they take are both objective and subjective. One can shape them a little with one's own mind.

"For one crime there is no asylum even in the Club," whispered Horace the Snake, who had sharp ears for whispering. "For all other crimes we give asylum, for the most heinous crime in the universe we give no asylum."

"What is the most heinous crime in the universe?" Roadstrum asked.

"Killing a songbird."

Roadstrum had a way of putting it on a little thick himself.

"Be there a man among you who doubts my demesne or destiny, then I have fared in vain," he said. "I bare my throat to the treacherous steel —"

"All right, all right," the three tough crewmen capitulated. We're with you all the way and in everything. Only spare us the 'act.'"

"'Monday and Tuesday and Monday and Tuesday and Monday and Tuesday,' so the poor slaves had to sing in their labor for the puca. And finally a great savior broke the charm. 'And Wednesday too' he said, and then it was all over with."

"Roadstrum is the great savior who breaks the charm," Roadstrum announced. "I will set a Wednesday-term to the monster. But there are other elements in this…"

I will never tell anyone how much fun it is in this place.

Man-a-bleeding, but they broke out of that place! You say it can't be done, but they did it. Their expectations had been too high, and no second-rate Hell could hold them.

In a way it was their greatest feat. No one else had ever broken out of there before.