In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as possible. I pretend to myself that I would be quite happy in a hermit's cave, living on gruel, if someone else would make the gruel. Gruel, like so many other things, is beyond me.

It's true that there is a rescue thing in people, and not just rescuing the family, which is kind of obvious from a biological point of view. But why is it that some people will jump into a freezing river and swim out to a downed plane for total strangers? What is that about? And it seems to be that it's part of your concept of who you are. That's why some people run into the burning buildings, because if they don't, their concept of who they are will be violated. They wouldn't be who they thought they were.

When they came to harvest my corpse (open your mouth, close your eyes) cut my body from the rope, surprise, surprise: I was still alive. Tough luck, folks, I know the law: you can't execute me twice for the same thing. How nice. I fell to the clover, breathed it in, and bared my teeth at them in a filthy grin. You can imagine how that went over. Now I only need to look out at them through my sky-blue eyes. They see their own ill will staring then in the forehead and turn tail Before, I was not a witch. But now I am one.

Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the sordid physicalities, might overwhelm or damage them. For instance, men often faint at the sight of their own blood, to which they are not accustomed. For this reason you should never stand behind one in the line at the Red Cross donor clinic.

I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

Canada, at the moment, is going through a Lord of the Rings moment. Having been a lowly Hobbit with furry feet and fun parties, with fireworks and beer, it has now been handed the Ring of Power: a large supply of fossil fuel, in the form of oil/tar sand and coal. Will it shrivel into an evil RingWraith? Will it become an addicted Golum? Will it refuse the Ring, like Galadriel, fearful of what So Much Power (in both senses of the word) will do to its inner being? Will it try to deal with the Ring responsibly, like Gandalf? Will it side with the Ents?

You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.