Be proud of your mistakes. Well, proud may not be exactly the right word, but respect them, treasure them, be kind to them, learn from them. And, more than that, and more important than that, make them. Make mistakes. Make great mistakes, make wonderful mistakes, make glorious mistakes. Better to make a hundred mistakes than to stare at a blank piece of paper too scared to do anything wrong.

When I was about ten my favourite article in the huge and mouldering Encyclopedia Britannica we owned (the ninth edition) was the one on Lycanthropy. (Yes, I had a favourite 1890s Britannica article when I was ten. I am now aware this is not entirely usual.)

You must have a bladder like Lake Erie. I think empires rose and fell in the time it took you to pee. I could hear it the whole time." Thank you. Do you want something?

Night was spreading slowly around the spinning Earth. It should have been full of pinpricks of light. It was not. There were five billion people down there. What was going to happen soon would make barbarism look like a picnic - hot, nasty, and eventually given over to the ants.

As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time.

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.

Shadow looked down at the girl on the table. “What happened to her?” he asked. “Poor taste in boyfriends,” said Jacquel. “It’s not always fatal.