As the Russians say, getting what you want sometimes requires moving like the knight in chess: forward and to the left.

Recall that one builds a labyrinth not to hide but to lie in wait.

Chemo is a little death that you invite in in order to keep the big death waiting outside on the porch.

Ideally, the business and the personal should never mix, but with human beings there’s always going to be some blurring of the lines.

Number one: you are not the first and you will certainly not be the last. Number two: remember, it’s not about the money – it’s about The Chain.

They have all sipped from the Drink Me bottle. They have all unwound the clew of red thread. They have all fallen through the looking glass.

It only takes two facing mirrors to construct a labyrinth. Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights.

George Orwell was wrong, she thinks. In the future, it won’t be the state that keeps tabs on everyone by extensive use of surveillance; it will be the people.

The driver had on Radio 1, which was giving us Kylie Minogue’s ‘I should be so lucky’... By the song’s second verse I was already longing for an IRA ambush and and by the second chorus I was dreaming of a rogue comet strike.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It’s part of our DNA. That’s why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.