A city like London was always going to be a paradox, the best of it so very riddled with the opposite, so Swiss-cheesed with moral holes.

Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.

My parents were hippies, and the story is that they went through a dictionary looking for a beautiful word to name me. They nearly called me Banyan, but flipped a few pages on and reached "China," thankfully. The other reason they liked it is that "china" is Cockney rhyming slang for "mate." People say "my old china," meaning "my old mate," because "china plate" rhymes with "mate.

Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they're amiable and sometimes not.

A sickly little smile grew and died on his mouth like a fungus.

Fantastic fiction covers fantasy, horror and science fiction - and it doesn't get the attention it deserves from the literati.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.