"[Hayley] wanted to leap on Tollie and pull pieces of him—ears, fingers, hair, she scarcely cared which, so long as they came away with lots of blood—but, luckily, at that moment a large lady bustled up and enfolded Hayley against her big soft bosom hung with many hard strings of beads" (Chapter 1, p. 5).

"Grandma disapproved of running and shouting and laughing and singing as well as painting outside the line" (Chapter 2, p. 17).

"Being ordered to forget about the mythosphere was like being ordered not to think of a blue elephant" (Chapter 3, p. 26).

"'He managed to be really offensive to a goddess,' Flute told her. 'Things like this happen on every strand, you know. The mythosphere is not an entirely happy place'" (Chapter 4, p. 47).

"[H]er fingers were clamped round a pork chop. It was large. It was raw, and whitish with waterlogging, and...