Is it rather stupid and dangerous to take Magna Carta so much for granted, as many of us seem to do, and to think of this attitude as 'very English?'

History is too often the refuge of the tidy-minded, making neat patterns when the dust has settled.

There's nothing the British like better than a bloke who comes from nowhere, makes it, and then gets clobbered.

To hear the Treorchy Male Choir in full throat is one of the great joys of choral music.

Writing novels is a way of living alternative lives.

Occasionally now I feel a wang that goes in my head - once you've got it you've got it. The [illness] was quite severe, leaving me deeply unhappy and frightened.

When anybody tells you something about writing, somebody will tell you something completely different and they will also be right

More people now work in the arts than the steel, coal and car industries combined.

I'm not a fan of the working class being mocked, including by some of our famous writers - even those who came from it.

The arts stimulate imagination. They provoke thought. And then, having done that, all sorts of other things happen.

Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly.

Promises are perhaps made in haste or out of emotions, that is why people do not afford to keep them

23. With God, even when nothing is happening...something is happening.

The role of a retired person is no longer to possess one.

When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

All change begins with a DECISION. Once the decision is made, DISCIPLINE becomes the bridge between desire and accomplishment.

Great revolutions, whatever may be their causes, are not lightly commenced, and are not concluded with precipitation.

One patient had severe pre-treatment pain resulting from skeletal meta-stases...at 5 weeks after the onset of (laetrile and metabolic) therapy, she claimed complete relief.

I think a lot of people, if they get the opportunity to do some acting, they think, 'I might be a star.'

Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature.

And it is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best.