In the Middle Ages, they had guillotines, stretch racks, whips and chains. Nowadays, we have a much more effective torture device called the bathroom scale. – Stephen Phillips
To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876
Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear. – Helen Dunmore
