Biography is the mesh through which real life escapes.

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.

If enough things that are untrue are said about you, no one will know what really is true.

Real data is messy. ...It's all very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it's playing your song, but unfortunately it's out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk- I mean, the noise! Impossible!

When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?

The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.

Well, we'll know better next time.