You're nothing if you're not special.

Nice day for a funeral.

Do you realise how much trouble you're in?" "Perhaps I'll have some Weetabix after all.

My father was aloof, very strange and very distant.

The CIA agent looked more dead than alive. Alex wondered if he had been hit, but there was no sign of any blood. Perhaps he was in shock.

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.

But then, he thought, most politicians are small and shabby, the sort of people who have been bullied at school. That's why they become politicians.