I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?

It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story "The Book-Bag.

With the knowledge of her aloneness came a rush of self-declaration: “I will not be nothing.”

I love you. I will love you till the stars crumble, which is a less idle threat than is usual to lovers on parting.

The great thing about fantasy is that you can drag dreams and longings and hopes and fears and strivings out of your subconscious and call them 'magic' or 'dragons' or 'faeries' and get to know them better. But then I write the stuff. Obviously I'm prejudiced.

It's hard to look too grand when you're led by someone who looks like a pudding with legs.

I like to assume that since I drive a car and maintain a respectable credit rating and rarely murder anyone and bury them in the back garden unless they really deserve it, that the fact that I hear voices wont unduly disturb anyone.