Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.

Classically, very few people have considered that cleanliness is next to godliness. A rank loincloth and hair in an advanced state of matted entanglement have generally been the badges of office of prophets whose injunction to disdain earthly things starts with soap.

A good banana daiquiri is hard to come by. I've only ever found one place in this country that makes a proper one, and that's in Leeds.

You were the kind of kid who couldn't see the difference between throwing rocks at a cat and setting it on fire.

I certainly don't sit down and plan a book out before I write it. There's a phrase I use called "The Valley Full of Clouds." Writing a novel is as if you are going off on a journey across a valley. The valley is full of mist, but you can see the top of a tree here and the top of another tree over there. And with any luck you can see the other side of the valley. But you cannot see down into the mist. Nevertheless, you head for the first tree.

The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.