If you are flattering a woman, it pays to be a little more subtle. You don't have to bother with men, they believe any compliment automatically.

What I find interesting is how close you can run the laughter along the seam of seriousness, and occasionally cross it, so that half the house genuinely doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. Custard pie humour is fairly universal, but at the other end, which I'm more interested in, there's the humour that hovers on the darkness, that walks in the shadow of something else, not always that obvious.

As a writer one is allowed to have conversations with oneself. What is considered sane in writers is made for the rest of the human race.

Salad, I can't bear salad. It grows while you're eating it, you know.

There is a school of thought that believes that sleep is for the night. You appear to be out to disprove them.

A gentleman ... sleeps at his work. That's what work's for. Why do you think they have the SILENCE notices in the library? So as not to disturb me in my little nook behind the biography shelves.

The darker the subject, the more light you must try to shed on the matter. And vice versa.