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

ARGH! There's no such thing [as writer's block]. Seriously: THERE. IS. NO. SUCH. THING. You know what there is? There's a bunch of problems, creative and otherwise, that can stop you writing. They are not block. They are important skills.

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.

Law is error, you see. It's an attempt to write down a lot of things everyone ought to know anyway.

Ninjas are silly. They are the flower fairies of gong fu and karate.

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.

It's not that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic, it's that any technology taking place beyond the threshold of our senses is.