How do you know you're having fun if there's no one watching you have it? - Douglas Adams

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder... Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.

The seat received him in a loose and distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the last fifteen years of your life and will therefore furnish you with a basic sherry, but refuses to catch your eye.

My capacity for happiness,’ he added, ‘you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.