I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the level of success I've had. I was just writing stories for my own sons.

Will I be a success? I don't know.

I'm Joanna Champion.

The people who are the most successful in life are not stopped by fear.

If at first you don't succeed... so much for skydiving.

Strike and struggle precede success, even in the dictionary.

Winning is very addictive, that's why it's very hard when suddenly - boom - you are not the favorites any more.

Calling Batman 'the Dark Knight' is like calling Papa Smurf 'the Blue Patriarch':you're not fooling anyone.

Rather than setting yourself a New Year's resolution, why not simply pick a reason for hating yourself for the next 365 days? Takes less time, and it's easier to stick to.

New Year's resolutions work like this: you think of something you enjoy doing and then resolve to stop doing it.

I can't imagine painting my face in a team colour and roaring with delight as a multi-millionaire kicks a ball at a net.

If your home is anything like mine, it contains several rarely explored crannies stashed full of archaic chargers, defunct cables, and freshly antiquated gizmos whose sole useful function in 2011 is to make 2005 feel like 1926, simply by looking big and dull and impossibly lumpen.

Ever since about 1998, when humankind began fast-forwarding through the gradually-unfolding history of progress, like someone impatiently zipping through a YouTube clip in search of the best bits, we've grown accustomed to machines veering from essential to obsolete in the blink of a trimester.

What I disliked most about working as a shop assistant wasn't the occasional snooty customer or the shop or the hours, but the way people reacted when I told them I was a shop assistant - their automatic assumption that I didn't enjoy it.

If I ran a national burger franchise - which I don't - I'd make it a rule that no two customers can be greeted with precisely the same words and that every third customer must be grossly insulted as a matter of course. Just to keep the atmosphere nice and lively. And to keep the staff laughing.

The majority of people are perfectly capable of interacting with retail staff without spitting on them or whipping their hides like dawdling cattle, but Planet Earth still harbours more than its fair share of disappointments.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat waiters and shop assistants, especially when you are one.

Like bankers, top footballers are massively overpaid, but at least you comprehend what they're doing for the money.

Banking, as far as I can tell, seems to be almost as precise a science as using a slot machine. You either blindly hope for the best, delude yourself into thinking you've worked out a system, or open it up when no one's looking and rig the settings so it'll pay out illegally.

The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief. So does a fairy story or an animated cartoon. This means that no matter how soberly the financial experts dress, no matter how dry their language, the economy they worship can only ever be as plausible as an episode of 'SpongeBob SquarePants.'

I'm no financial expert. I scarcely know what a coin is. Ask me to explain what a credit default swap is, and I'll emit an unbroken 10-minute 'um' through the clueless face of a broken puppet. You might as well ask a pantomime horse.

It must be awful, being a homophobe.

Youth fare aside, I have generally always been interested in what's going on culturally.

When a monk takes a vow of silence, is he still allowed to post messages on the Internet? Chances are God won't find out. Being ancient, God probably can't work computers. He holds the mouse gingerly, like it's made of fine china.