Dreamless nights, I knew, can be the most troubling, since you come back not knowing where you’ve been or what you’ve done.

Cheese!” I exclaimed. It was a secret prayer, whose meaning was known only to God and to me.

How could I possibly learn to survive in such a pagan place, where trams were streetcars, vans and lorries were trucks, pavements were sidewalks, jumpers were sweaters, petrol was gasoline, aluminium was aluminum, sweets were candy, a full stop was a period, and cheerio was goodbye?

Let’s go have a look at those first edition Pickwick Papers I promised to show you. You’ll find Dickens’s signature especially suggestive. It’s in green ink on the title page of each number.” “Nineteen signatures of the divine Dickens,” Helmut marveled. “Remarkable. Lead on, dear Daphne.

We were all of us like the proverbial ships that pass in the night, signaling only briefly to one another before sailing off over the horizon into our own patch of darkness.

Experience has taught me that an expected answer is often better than the truth.

To those of us who truly love one another, the occasional flaming fib serves only to strengthen the ties.

What are we going to do, Dogger?” It seemed a reasonable question. After all he had been through, surely Dogger knew something of hopeless situations. “We shall wait upon tomorrow,” he said. “But – what if tomorrow is worse than today?” “Then we shall wait upon the day after tomorrow.” “And so forth?” I asked. “And so forth,” Dogger said.

I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material – something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.

People who turn pages with licked fingers are as bad as those who wipe their noses on the table linen.