The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date.

I've managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years," she announced with some small sense of achievement. "I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.

Don't ever call me mad, Mycroft. I'm not mad. I'm just ... well, differently moraled, that's all.

Social mores change with time, like fashion - who knows where it might all end up? I especially like the idea that waste, impoliteness and overpopulation become "abominations," although I'm not sure recycling one's aunt will ever truly catch on.

Mr. McGregor's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? Quite the Darth Vader of children's literature.

I still feel threatened by academics, but my books have a lot of academic in-jokes and everybody assumes I went to university and studied English.

Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer.