World War III will be triggered off not by suppressed nationalists seeking political independence, as happened the first time around when the Serbs at Sarajevo shot the heir to the Austrian throne, but by some semiliterate, whacked-out "loner" who lobs a rocket into a nuclear arsenal in order to impress Brooke Shields.

The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

It's best to give while your hand is still warm.

Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.

I was gushing and I knew it. I surprised myself with my eagerness to please, felt myself saying too much, explaining too much, overinvolved and overexcited in the way you are when you're a kid and you think you've found a soul mate in the new boy down the street and you feel yourself drawn by the force of the courtship and so act as you don't normally do and a lot more openly than you may even want to.

Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.