My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow

I want to know what they look like, their height, and colouring, physique and speech pattens.

There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart.

If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they kill you. They do I tell you!

I hate being on my best behavior. It brings out the absolute worst in me.

The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did.

The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more.

What was sleep? A blessing, a respite from life, an echo of death, a demanding nuisance?

Belief doesn't rest on proof or existence...it rests on faith...without faith there is nothing.

That's the purpose of old age... To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did.

Love and hate are cruel, only liking is kind

In a thousand years, Fred, no one will even know or care we existed.

As life goes on, images fade.

When someone is buying a sample-based album, they are investing in the concept of that album. If they really like the original source material, they can go buy it.

You can look at a person's attitude and know what kind of thinking is prevalent in his life... It's better to be positive and wrong than negative and right!

If it's against state law, it's generally considered a breach of Etiquette.

I did not become great by association of The Beatles! Beatles make Maharishi great? Pah! It is a waste of thought.

Everything that thou reprovest in another, thou must most carefully avoid in thyself. [Lat., Omnia quae vindicaris in altero, tibi ipsi vehementer fugienda sunt.]

Be yourself and true to yourself. You can do different things in the world.

We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.

Even idiots can grow up a little bit. It should be a bit more subdued. ... The first celebration should be subdued, and the fourth one should be crazy.