If the same object from two different times touches itself, one of two things will happen. Either the Universe will cease to exist. Or three remarkable dwarfs will dance through the streets with flowerpots on their heads.

I was the kind of person who knew what he wanted to do; I wanted to write, I wanted not to be in school, and I felt that university would just be spending another four years of my life before I could write.

It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.

The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.

She didn't have a daddy?" I asked. "No." "Did you have a daddy?" "You're all questions, aren't you? No, love. We never went in for that sort of thing. You only need men if you want to breed more men.

Libraries really are the gates to the future.

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.