Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.

Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.

Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.

There are few couples as unhappy as those who are too proud to admit their unhappiness.

All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.

The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.