“I suggest we depict penguins as callous and unfeeling creatures who insist on bringing up their children in what is little more than a large chest freezer.”

“If you want your fridge-freezer and your car and a nice house and asphalt on the roads and a health service, then thank the weapons business. Thank the war economy that drives us to this.”

“I collect ex-boyfriends -- and more than five, at last count.”

“I loved him, officer. More than any woman ever loved an egg.”

“Remember, Thursday, that scientific thought -- indeed, any mode of thought, whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else -- is just like the fashions that we wear -- only much longer lived. It's a little like a boy band.""Scientific thought a boy band? How do you figure that?""Well, every now and then a boy band comes along. We like it, buy the records, posters, parade them on TV, idolise them right up until --"..."-- the next boy band?" I suggested."Precisely. Aristotle was a boy band. A very good one but only number six or seven. He was the best boy band until Isaac Newton, but even Newton was transplanted by an even newer boy band. Same haircuts -- but different moves.""Einstein, right?""Right. Do you see what I'm saying?""I think so.""Good. So try and think of maybe thirty or forty boy bands past Einstein. To where we would regard Einstein as someone who glimpsed a truth, played one good chord on seven forgettable albums.""Where is this going, Dad?""I'm nearly there. Imagine a boy band so good that you never needed another boy band ever again. Can you imagine that?”

“I've managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years," she announced with some small sense of achievement. "I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.”

“We all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice.”