Never mind, never mind, let's get to the part where we smite the unrighteous. I've brought my most alarming teeth!

It's usually best not to ask philosophers anything, precisely because they have the habit of what in the Persian language is called sanud: the profitless consideration of unsettling yet inconsequential things.

If we one day cease to exist, what will be remarkable is that we were ever here at all.

The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.

I have known heaven, and now I am in hell, and there are mimes.

The Brit abroad is always the voice of caution. Persons of other cultures are known to be undisciplined, prone to leaning out of car windows and cooking with garlic.

I hover over the expensive Scotch and then the Armagnac, but finally settle on a glass of rich red claret. I put it near my nose and nearly pass out. It smells of old houses and aged wood and dark secrets, but also of hard, hot sunshine through ancient shutters and long, wicked afternoons in a four-poster bed. It's not a wine, it's a life, right there in the glass.