Statues lined the stairs and stood, dotted across the roof. But they had been brutalized by time and the weather. Some were missing arms. Many had no faces. Once they had been saints and angels. Two hundred years standing in London had turned them into cripples.

There are many things in life that cannot be explained.

For all men are equal at the moment of death and who are we to judge them when a much greater judge awaits?

You don't need to be able to string a sentence together in a way that is elegant or even vaguely meaningful to produce a bestseller - as Dan Brown has demonstrated time and again.

If this is what you do to the winner, I'd hate to see how you treat the runner up.

The platform underneath the balloon fell on her as she was trying to escape," she explained. "She was crushed." "I'd have been disappointed too.

Writing about magic is harder than writing about spies because you're dealing with something that doesn't really exist.