Death, I had discovered long ago, was available in varying flavors, and none of them particularly palatable.

Quarkbeasts, for all their fearsome looks, are obedient to a fault. They are nine-tenths velociraptor and kitchen blender and one-tenth Labrador. It was the Labrador tenth that I valued most.

People who read my books have an open mind when it comes to new, bizarre, interesting and exciting ideas.

Reality TV was to me the worst form of entertainment--the modern equivalent of paying sixpence to watch lunatics howling at the wall down at the local madhouse.

I also read about Heathcliff's unexpected three-year career in Hollywood under the name Buck Stallion and his eventual return to the pages of Wuthering Heights.

"Edward, Edward," he said with a patronising smile, "there are no unanswered questions of any relevance. Every question that we need to ask has been answered fully. If you can't find the correct answer then you are obviously asking the wrong question."

The universe always moves from an ordered state to a disordered one; that a glass may fall to the ground and shatter yet you never see a broken glass reassemble itself and then jump back on the table.