When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There - a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator - so decrees.

It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word travel is derived from travail, denoting the pains of childbirth.

Growing up in the English countryside seemed an interminable process. Freezing winter gave way to frosty spring, which in turn merged into chilly summer-but nothing ever, ever happened.

Knowing few children of my age with whom to compare notes, I envied the children of literature to whom interesting things were always happening.

Society created the prison in its own image will history, with its penchant for paradox, reverse those roles?

Now there is a society where the funeral industry got completely out of control.

In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor.

I discovered that Human Nature was not, as I had always supposed, a fixed and unalterable entity, that wars are not caused by a natural urge in men to fight, that ownership of land and factories is not necessarily the natural reward of greater wisdom and energy.

Things on the whole are much faster in America people don't 'stand for election', they 'run for office.'

the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something about what you've been writing about. You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Where, indeed. Many a badly stung survivor, faced with the aftermath of some relative's funeral, has ruefully concluded that the victory has been won hands down by a funeral establishment - in disastrously unequal battle.

Objectivity? I always have an objective.

You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

Alas, poor Yorick! How surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged and neatly dressed - transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.

Objectivity? I've always had an objective.

Picking other people's brains is an art worth cultivating.