Science, or para-science, tells us that geraniums bloom better if they are spoken to. But a kind word every now and then is really quite enough. Too much attention, like too much feeding, and weeding and hoeing, inhibits and embarrasses them.

Winterson has her own unmistakeable voice, tuned to express her obsessional preoccupation with sexual passion raised to the power of revealed religion. (...) The whole book is a kind of chant. It is a playful addition to the Winterson oeuvre. Yet it is not a slight work so much as, homonymically, a work of sleight- - a word for which the Shorter OED gives six definitions, ranging from trickery to wisdom, all of which apply to The.PowerBook.

There's no greater bliss in life than when the plumber eventually comes to unblock your drains. No writer can give that sort of pleasure.

The facts of life are to the biographer what the text of a novel is to the critic.

Science, or para-science, tells us that geraniums bloom better if they are spoken to. But a kind word every now and then is really quite enough. Too much attention, like too much feeding, and weeding and hoeing, inhibits and embarrasses them.