And this shows that people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth. And it shows that something called Occam's razor is true. And Occam's razor is not a razor that men shave with but a Law, and it says: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Which is Latin and it means: No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary. Which means that a murder victim is usually killed by someone known to them and fairies are made out of paper and you can't talk to someone who is dead.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it.

I think I've learnt that there is no character so strange that you haven't shared their experience in some small way.

Payments to the disabled are getting slashed and people like me are getting a tax cut. Who could possibly think that is a good thing?

One person looks around and sees a universe created by a god who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no great difference between one another, for neither set of beliefs make us kinder or wiser.