Writers and painters alike are in the business of consulting their own imaginations, and stimulating the imaginations of others. Together, and separately, they celebrate the absolute mystery of otherness.

Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?

I do needlepoint from kits. I give them as gifts to people in the form of cushion covers and they are often speechless with horror.

To some people, the fact that I am not married, or don't have children, would be the reason I have written a book on punctuation.

The way people behave towards each other is a measure of their value as human beings.

We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and elusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable.

The idea of withholding a massive secret is obviously quite exciting to some people. It is also the basis of much classic drama, of course, from Sophocles onwards.