I collect ex-boyfriends -- and more than five, at last count.

There is much unexplained in the world. It behooves us to be wary at all times. Just when you think you've got the hang of it, along comes string theory, collateralized debt obligations or Björk's new album, and bam! You're as confused as you were when you first started.

If it's a chimera alert, we just follows the screams.

This is our siblings of more famous BookWorld Personalities self-help group expalined Loser (Gatsby). That's Sharon Eyre, the younger and wholly disreputable sister of Jane; Roger Yossarian, the draft dodger and coward; Rupert Bond, still a virgin and can't keep a secret; Tracy Capulet, who has slept her way round Verona twice; and Nancy Potter, who is a Muggle.

Scientific thought - indeed, any mode of thought, whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else - is just like the fashions that we wear - only much longer lived. It's a little like a boy band.

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

the best lies to tell are the ones people want to believe