He never pays attention, he always knows the answer, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can't keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There's no educating a smart boy.

In Genua, someone set out to make dreams come true. Remember some of your dreams?

I think you should be proud of not being worse than just deeply introverted and socially maladjusted.

I'd like to sell a lot of books.

The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last one, even if it's just a few notes in a file. I dread not having work in progress.

The point is that if a book that had been published three years ago started to sell twice as many all of a sudden it probably wouldn't even get no­ticed. People wouldn't be tracking it. The system has cleaned up its act an awful lot but the best-seller list system is not an entirely foolproof thing.

Experience has taught me that you feel better on a flight if you avoid chicken fat in plastic sauce.