A cough so robust that I tapped into two new seams of phlegm.

It was an especially wonderful time to be a noisy moron.

We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A candle, a good candle, provides barely a hundredth of the illumination of a single 100 watt light bulb.

Columbus real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer.

I do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of London he is tired of life...I can't dispute it.

My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry.

It's hard not to be kind of pessimistic about human beings generally, because we do tend to mess things up. If you just look at the history of extinctions, we've killed off an awful lot of animals - and I don't think we're doing a very good job of looking after the planet.