Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course.

It's a guilty secret of a lot of writers, as you get older you don't read as much fiction as you used to, mainly because it's like you are deconstructing it all the time.

People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people.

A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say, 'Do not do this' in the hope that it'll work, but if it doesn't, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

If you try to to take my bananas from me, I will reclaim them from your cold dead hands.

And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.