Lynne Truss

After university, I got a job sub-editing and for years I was a literary editor.

What I have always liked about Brighton is its impersonality. Since the 18th century, people have come, used the place and gone home again.

My favorite thing in the world is a quiz show, 'University Challenge,' so you can see what kind of sad person I am.

Texting is a fundamentally sneaky form of communication, which we should despise, but it is such a boon we don't care. We are all sneaks now.

Texting is a supremely secretive medium of communication - it's like passing a note - and this means we should be very careful what we use it for.

Oh, the illusion of choice in the modern world - don't get me started. But don't you agree that the Internet has softened our brains and made us forget that 'choice' used to mean something different from selecting options from menus?

I am not against marriage. I lived with someone for 11 years. But we weren't in love, and I thought that was quite important.

The idea of withholding a massive secret is obviously quite exciting to some people. It is also the basis of much classic drama, of course, from Sophocles onwards.

What one discovers in life, I find, is that one's personality defects don't come and go.

Do you lend books and DVDs to people? If so, don't you always regret it? All my life I have forced books on to people who have subsequently forgotten all about it. Meanwhile, on my shelves sit many orphaned books loaned to me over the years by trusting, innocent souls - some as long ago as the Seventies.

All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.

Old radio comedy makes me laugh, as well as 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue' and comedians like Paul Merton.