As anyone who has ever fallen foul of an airport, a conventional hospital or a bad restaurant knows, misery is made up of little things.

There's comfort to an awful old dressing-gown a pretty peignoir is powerless to provide, and aging bra elastic, is, I suspect, as near to liberation as most women ever get.

Things a mother should know: how to comfort a son without exactly saying Daddy was wrong.

It might be marvelous to be a man - then I could stop worrying about what's fair to women and just cheerfully assume I was superior, and that they had all been born to iron my shirts. Better still, I could be an Irish man - then I would have all the privileges of being male without giving up the right to be wayward, temperamental and an appealing minority.

Americans, indeed, often seem to be so overwhelmed by their children that they'll do anything for them except stay married to the co-producer.

The Life and Soul, the man who will never go home while there is one man, woman or glass of anything not yet drunk.

In hell they will bore you, in heaven you will bore them.