I find the treatment of royalty distinctly peculiar. The royal family lives in palaces heavily screened from prying eyes by fences, grounds, gates, guards, all designed to ensure the family absolute privacy. And every newspaper in London carried headlines announcing PRINCESS ANNE HAS OVARIAN CYST REMOVED. I mean you're a young girl reared in heavily guarded seclusion and every beer drinker in every pub knows the precise state of your ovaries.

It looks too new and pristine ever to have been read by anyone else, but it has been: it keeps falling open at the most delightful places as the ghost of its former owner points me to things I've never read before.

Talent is the infinite capacity for taking pains. Genius is the infinite capacity for achievement without taking any pains at all.

Hollywood isn't a place, it's a way of life.

Fact One: Cataract surgery is simple, painless and (except with implants) risk free ... the whole procedure is common, routine and nothing to worry about. Fact Two: Fact One applies only to cataracts on the eyes in somebody else's head.

Standing there, staring at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace.

And for at least that moment, I wouldn't have traded the hundreds of books I've read for the few I know almost by heart.