The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world's population.

I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s. No country had ever known such prosperity.

We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.

What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit.

"Croissant": However you choose to pronounce it at home, it is perhaps worth nothing that outside the United States, the closer you can come to saying "kwass-ohn," the sooner you can expect to be presented with one.

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--

From an evolutionary point of view, sex is really just a reward mechanism to encourage us to pass on our genetic material.