John Niven

“Asking a decent editor to save this book would have been like asking a doctor to help a corpse that had fallen from the top of the Empire State Building.”

“My family went to Toronto to visit relatives when I was 13 or 14. It was the first time we had ever been abroad. This was the early Eighties, and I remember the impossible glamour of air tra...”

“From everything I can read about Aussie spiders, it seems like all they really like doing is hiding in your house or garden or car until you 'accidentally' disturb them - probably by doing s...”

“America has the largest nuclear capability in the world. All this power neither prevented 9/11 nor helped to avenge it. How could it? Who would America have attacked?”

“It strikes me as one of nature's greatest jokes that the types of food we all like to eat more than anything (especially in winter) are the very things that cause the most insane weight gain...”

“It's tough being a dictator, but I've always thought it must be tougher being a hanger-on to a dictator. The late nights spent listening to his crazed ranting, the weary rictus grin from smi...”

“When my last relationship broke up, I bought a house one door along from my ex so that our daughter could continue to see as much of both of us as possible. This seems to me eminently sane a...”

“The last time I saw Dad alive, he was in the hospital. He was watching 'Hell Drivers,' a crummy B-movie about truckers, on TV and reading the 'Daily Record.' This seems scarcely believable,...”

“Among the Internet's many gains for humanity, decreasing paranoia has not been one of them. Anything from that lump under your armpit to what's lurking in the sea - just type it into a searc...”

“I love Twitter, and my little corner of it is heavily weighted in favour of women, many of them writers: Caitlin Moran, India Knight, Lauren Laverne, Grace Dent, Deborah Orr, Marina Hyde, Su...”

“I can still remember my mum (a voracious, if not discriminating, reader - I have seen everything from the sublime to the ridiculous by her bed, from Ian Rankin and Elmore Leonard to Barbara...”

“I was on the dole once. I loved it. It was only for a couple of years, when I was 20 or 21 and playing in a band. Back then, this was something young folk did - you got your rent paid, a lit...”

“I cannot, will never, understand these couples who hate each other, who conduct open warfare in front of their children - the kind of people who have to drop the kids off at the end of the d...”

“I've often found myself looking fondly at the Valentine's cultures in other countries. South Korea, for instance - where women must give chocolate to men.”

“If you put a frog in boiling water, it'll jump straight out. If you put it in cold water and gradually bring it to the boil, it'll sit right there until it dies. Scotland has been sitting in...”

“There are some sentences you cannot see yourself ever writing. 'I heartily endorse the Conservative Party' would be one. 'I look forward to Justin Bieber's new record' would be another.”

“You'll never even catch me doing that 'soft atheist' thing of very softly singing along or just mouthing the words, looking down at a hymn sheet every few seconds to check the words. To stat...”

“I once worked at a record label called London Records. The company was owned by Roger Ames, one of the most successful figures in the British music industry. Roger always placed a value on l...”

“Like measles, the reading bug is best caught when you are young.”

“If pushed to say what I like about Elizabeth, who, as I'm sure most of you know, overtook Queen Victoria this week to become our longest-serving monarch, it would be her uncomplaining, getti...”