There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

I mean, I wouldn't pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and I'm me.

Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.

Inside every sane person there's a madman struggling to get out," said the shopkeeper. "That's what I've always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.

Oh. I see. People don't want to see what can't possibly exist.