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.

The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.

If I come back, it will be a place, but it won't be a home any longer.

I don't know much more than I did when I was alive. Most of the stuff I know now that I didn't know then I can't put into words.

I was not scared of anything, when I read my book.

She smiled again. "Do you like cat?" she said. "Yes," said Richard. "I quite like cats." Anaesthesia looked relieved. "Thigh?" she asked, "or breast?

I feel like I am involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell me the rules, and who smiles all the time.