Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could have made me do it, or prevented me from doing it.

Your Wheezy, sir, your Wheezy — Wheezy who is giving Dobby his sweater!

Whoops - My wand is a little over excited!

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

I feel 80% of my life is completely normal.

And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart that he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent to beasthood.

I see a light in the kitchen. Let us not deprive Molly any longer of the chance to deplore how thin you are.