I had always thought that once you grew up you could do anything you wanted - stay up all night or eat ice-cream straight out of the container.

Because time moves more slowly in Kid World ... it goes on for decades ... It is adult life that is over in a twinkling.

Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead.

It was an odd situation. For a century and a half, men got rid of their own hair, which was perfectly comfortable, and instead covered their heads with something foreign and uncomfortable. Very often it was actually their own hair made into a wig. People who couldn't afford wigs tried to make their hair look like a wig.

Not writing the same kind of book over and over again is to me the real pleasure of what I do.

I don't want to go and start trying to make jokes in places like India, Tanzania or Iraq. Afghanistan is not a funny place.

I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.