People will go to endless trouble to divorce one person and then marry someone who is exactly the same, except probably a bit poorer and a bit nastier. I don't think anybody learns anything.

There is always time for failure

To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph.

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yoghurt.

No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.

All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.

Never believe a rumour until you hear it officially denied.

We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol.

The secret of good health and happiness is to have rather small illnesses throughout your life which you can rely on to stop you doing anything you don't want to do.

Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.

I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.

An apple only falls far from its tree when carried away by divine winds.

Such is my experience - not that I ever mourned the loss of a child, but that I consider myself as lost!

San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities

I don't believe in God, but I do believe in His saints.

To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: 'Be angry, but sin not.' 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.'

I think science and religion should be separate.

I'm not a huge Steven Spielberg nerd, but I know about him and I know of his work.

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.

The Middle Eastern states aren't nations; they're quarrels with borders.

The purely abstract theorist runs the risk that, as with modern decor, the furniture of the mind will be sparse, bare, and uncomfortable.