Aphorisms are literature's hand luggage. Light and compact, they fit easily into the overhead compartment of your brain.

Advice is given freely because so much of it is worthless.

The mind revels in conjecture. Where information is lacking, it will gladly fill in the gaps.

Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate and learn, discover and invent.

Metaphor impinges on everything, allowing us - poets and non-poets alike - to experience and think about the world in fluid, unusual ways.

I believe aphorisms are best when first read in the wild, free from the confines of any categories.

London always reminds me of a brain. It is similarly convoluted and circuitous. A lot of cities, especially American ones like New York and Chicago, are laid out in straight lines. Like the circuits on computer chips, there are a lot of right angles in cities like this. But London is a glorious mess. It evolved from a score or so of distinct villages, that merged and meshed as their boundaries enlarged. As a result, London is a labyrinth, full of turnings and twistings just like a brain.