I hadn't liked him at first. He did sort of grow on you after a while. Like the cosmopolitans. Or maybe because of the cosmopolitans.

Like true philosophers I've come to believe that religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown after proper education.

People loved you in the way they knew how - and often it was not the way you knew. Or needed.

He needed fresh air and sunshine. A walk in the woods and afterward a good book to read by the fire. Yeah, that was the life.

Cops before breakfast.Before coffee even. As if Mondays weren't bad enough.

If there was one life skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity

Rachel delivered it like an official pronouncement. Like she was one of the fairies gifting Sleeping Beauty's christening: Beauty. Intelligence. Heterosexual.

To find them all in one package...well, perhaps better not to dwell on his package in my fragile state.

I thought of the words of the Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne. "If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

The only thing worse than opera is someone who hums along with opera.

I don't know if real courage lies in storming barricades or simply not denying the truth.

He is no fool who believes the man who knows everything.

I have crazy claustrophobic dreams, weird elevator dreams where the elevator closes in and all of a sudden I am lying down - oh my God, it's a casket. Just freaky stuff like that.

I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book.

Once upon a time, something happened, and it was better than something not happening. The end.

Very few people really see things unless they've had someone in early life who made them look at things. And name them too. But the looking is primary, the focus.

I love Indian food - it's my favourite cuisine. I love the mixture of spices and the subtle flavours. It's really erotic; the spices are so sensuous.

For to save mankind's future freedom, we must face up to any risk that is necessary. We will always seek peace - but we will never surrender.

The thing about Manchester is...it all comes from here

Let us never forget this, he is pure mercy, let us go to Jesus!

A good time occurs precisely when we lose track of what time it is.