How fishy on the fishiness scale? Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark." "A whale isn't a fish, Thursday." "A whale shark is--sort of." "All right, it's as fishy as a crayfish." "A crayfish isn't a fish." "A starfish, then." "Still not a fish." "This is a very odd conversation, Thursday.

Fiction wouldn't be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere.

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

She wasn't the only one to be physically morphed by reader expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not, and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn't just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.

Ordinary adults don't like children to speak of things that are denied them by their own gray minds.

Cats aren't really friendly, they're just cozying up to the dominant life-form as a hedge against extinction.

I suggest we depict penguins as callous and unfeeling creatures who insist on bringing up their children in what is little more than a large chest freezer.