Quotes of the Week

The first one comes from a lovely Dutchman, who pretty much cleared us out of paperback fiction in Dutch. He said that paperback fiction in Dutch in the Netherlands is quite expensive, because it's a fairly small market, so he was very pleased to see it cheaper overseas: "And it's great to find one of the great works of Dutch literature next to a book on tax returns!"

The second was a lady who picked up one of the Hay Festival brochures from the desk. As she was flicking through, I told her that a lot of the events were already booked up. "Oh," she said, "you can't just turn up, then?"