They like to tell us that it is important to speak the truth, but it has been my experience that real happiness lies in having people tell you what you want to believe, usually not the same thing at all, and if you have to stub your toe on the truth later, so be it.

I'm quite sure more people fake an awful lot of everyday human contact. I just fake all of it." --Dexter

What to wear? I could think of no guidelines on what we were wearing this season to a party forced on you to celebrate an unwanted engagement that might turn into a violent confrontation with a vengeful maniac. Clearly brown shoes were out, but beyond that nothing really seemed de rigueur.

Getting yelled at by a furious woman should be treated as a semiformal occasion.

Nothing in life is fair. Fair is a dirty word and I'll thank you not to use that language around me.

In that tremendous flash of freedom, on my way to do The Thing for the first time, sanctioned by Almighty Harry, I receded, faded back into the scenery of my own dark self, whole the other me crouched and growled. I would do It at last, do what I had been created to do. And I did.

I had become a perfect fake human, saying the stupid and pointless things that humans say to each other all day long.