To call New York's traffic at holiday time a nightmare is to understate.

I don't see the future as bright, language-wise. I see it as a glass half empty - and evaporating quickly.

Every time someone says, 'You know, we really ought to get together,' if I were really honest, I would ask 'Why?'

In the main, ghosts are said to be forlorn and generally miserable, if not downright depressed. The jolly ghost is rare.

I have never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics.

History is not reassuring on the subject of the longevity of seemingly lasting great nations, is it?

I have a long list of things that make me mad.