Stephen Fry

Cartwright looked up from the Chamber’s Encyclopaedia […] One day he would get right to the end, to zythum. Not that he needed to. He had already peeped ahead and seen that it was a kind of ancient Egyptian beer, much recommended by Diodorus Siculus – whoever he was.

‘Have you ever contemplated, Adrian, the phenomenon of springs?’ / ‘Coils, you mean?’ / ‘Not coils, Adrian, no. Coils not. Think springs of water. Think wells and spas and sources. Well-springs in the widest and loveliest sense. Jerusalem, for instance, is a spring of religiosity. One small town in the desert, but the source of the world’s three most powerful faiths. […] Religion seems to bubble from its sands.’