"a hint was to Esk what a mosquito bite was to the average rhino because she was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you." "Esk, of course, had not been trained, and it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in the path of the bicycle of history." "They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were ignorant of only ordinary things."