The taipan is the one to watch out for. It is the most poisonous snake on Earth, with a lunge so swift and a venom so potent that your last mortal utterance is likely to be: "I say, is that a sn--

I had to drive to Minneapolis once, and went on a back road just to see the country. But there was nothing to see. It's just flat and hot, and full of corn and soybeans and hogs. Every once in a while you come across a farm or some dead little town where the liveliest thing is the flies.

Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.

The tearoom lady called me love. All the shop ladies called me love and most of the men called me mate. I hadn't been here twelve hours and already they loved me.

I really enjoy going to a library and spending the day doing research - to me that is the most pleasurable part of writing the science book.

In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.