• All our lives we dance on a thin layer of ice; it’s very cold underneath, and death is quick. The ice won’t bear the weight of some people and they fall through. That’s the moment that interests me. If we’re lucky, it never happens to us and we keep dancing. If we’re lucky.

• The garden became Fähner’s salvation. He ordered books, subscribed to specialist journals, and read everything he could lay his hands on about shrubs, ponds and trees. He bought the best tools, informed himself about watering systems, and learned everything there was to learn with his customary systematic thoroughness.

• Punishment should be a deterrent. Punishment should protect us. Punishment should make the perpetrator avoid any such act in the future. Punishment should counterbalance injustice.

• A police officer once said to a federal judge that defence lawyers are no more than brakes on the vehicle of justice. The judge replied that a vehicle without brakes isn’t much use, either.