3:38 Flashman's Flank Attack: ... I pressed my lips to her fingers - and nuzzled swiftly up her naked arm in Flashy's flank attack, across shoulder and neck and fastened on her full red lips.

3:48 Flashman on the way women flirt: Well, women flirt all ways to bad: there are the kittens who liked to be tickled, and the cats who must be coaxed while they pretend to claw, and the tigress who have only one end in mind, so to speak.

8:23 Flashman's comment after one of his captors removed his hood: He pulled off his hood - and I'm bound to say he'd looked better with it on, ...

8:85 Flashman explains why he was always getting shanghaied: It's being six foot two and desperate-looking that does it, you know; if I'd been short-arsed with no chin and knock-knees, no one in search of a hero would have looked at me twice.

9:47 Flashman's low-key method for determining who was watching him in a crowded dining room: ... [I] drew a deep breath and let out a Lakota war-whoop at the top of my voice. A woman shrieked, men sprang to their feet, a passing waiter went up like a galvanised grouse and dropped his loaded tray with a tremendous smash - and then there was dead silence as a hundred mouths gaped and two hundred eyes goggled; every head turned, in fact - save for a tall chap near the door who kept his eyes fixed on his plate, and another with his back turned who watched me like a hawk in a mirror on the far end.

9:50 Flashman's solution for taking care of the raucous, spoiled, undisciplined, selfish ghastliness American children: ... run Herod for President.

10:41-42 Flashman's response to being asked (while in a tit-painting emporium) what color he preferred womens breasts: "Eh?", says I, startled. "Oh, I don't know ... what flavors have you got?"

11:62 Flashman's reaction to Senator Seward's veiled threat to discredit him with Queen Victoria and Lord Palmerston: I've received quite a few vicious thrusts in the low lines in life's fencing-match, but this was the real navel-slasher.

12:98 Flashman describes Charles La Force: ... beneath his revolting exterior there lurked a monster whose depraved tastes would have had Caligula throwing up the window and hollering for the peelers [police].

13:79 Flashman's reaction to being followed by his guard when he went to relieve himself: ... [I] descended the attic ladder to a window where I relieved myself into the night ... and turned to find him within a yard of me, pistol in hand and glowering as though he'd just escaped from Sinbad's bottle. It gave me a horrid scare, but I got my own back by offering to hold the pistol and keep a look-out while he took his turn at blighting Sanborn's geraniums.

15:39 Flashman describes John Brown's reaction to hearing that they would capture a pistol that Lafayette gave to George Washington and Frederick the Great's sword: It kept him happy for a couple of days; if only Harper's Ferry had also contained Franklin's lighting-rod and Jefferson's commode, he'd have been in wonderland for a week.

18:110 Flashman uses the overweight Mrs. Popplewell as a projectile: Casting gallantry aside, I seized her amidships, swung her off her feet with a herculean effort, and hurled her at them - and I'm here to tell you that a tenth of a ton of well-nourished negress, point-blank and well driven, is a damned effective missile. They went down all there of them with a shock that rattled the hotel ...