I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.

You never knew about people, like you never knew how deep a pond was because all you saw was the top.

I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?

Journalism makes you think fast. You have to speak to people in all walks of life. Especially local journalism.

This wasn't food - it was what food became if it had been good and gone to food heaven.

Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and wind at eighty miles an hour.That would do it every time.