I haven't had a single moment of terror since they told me [I was dying]. My only regret is to die four pages too soon. If I can finish, then I'm quite happy to go.

Some of the words and symbols and images from childhood will continually be part and parcel of my personality.

I did not fully understand the dread term 'terminal illness' until I saw Heathrow for myself.

We should always look back on our own past with a sort of contempt, as long as the tenderness is there - but please let some of the contempt be there.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.

That vision of a common culture is now simply a remote wistfulness.

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in.

A bad act done will fester and create in its own way. It's not only goodness that creates. Bad things create. They have their own yeast.

There's no end to the inventiveness of critics, I tell you. Because they can't write fiction, they put their impulse into their analysis of work.

Children are very cruel, yes. Of course. Children are extraordinarily cruel little creatures.

Television's Mr. Filth: that's me.

A willing soul will keenly go the length, breadth and depth to fulfill the dream.

Honesty isn't easy. Or comfortable.

In the garden of humanity every baby is a fresh new flower who can smile, laugh, giggle, dance, love and sing with mother earth.

Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes with time.

I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show, which would be called 'A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'.

Be you wise and never sad, You will get your lovely lad. Never serious be, nor true, And your wish will come to you-- And if that makes you happy, kid, You'll be the first it ever did.

The divorce between church and state should be absolute.

I don't think it has to be one religious structure, one church. I think the issues of faith and redemption are much more universal than any one religion.

I think it's therapeutic when we play. It's just like therapy.

At some point, you grow out of being attracted to that flame that burns you over and over and over again.