“I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport.”

“Nine years ago, my sister handed me a paperback she had picked up in an airport shop on her way to India. It was a gloomy-looking book, with a black an white photo of a steam train approaching through fog on the cover. Cutting across the top of the photo was . . . an author's name I did not know: J.K. Rowling. I began to read the novel and by page three, I was hooked.”

“By then she was the only one of her seven siblings without a child and quickly approaching thirty (which is like forty when you adjust for inflation since 1980).”

“I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.”

“You have to unhook your seat belt." "That's not true." "I'm afraid it's difficult to walk on the beach if you're strapped to a car seat.”

“As the dragon charged it released huge clouds of hissing steam through its nostrils. It was almost as if a gigantic teapot had gone mad.”