The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with faith to fight for it

No society can legitimately call itself civilized if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.

How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.

No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.

Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets

The Tories, every election, must have a bogy man. If you haven't got a programme, a bogy man will do.

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.

The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away.

We could manage to survive without money changers and stockbrokers. We should find it harder to do without miners, steel workers and those who cultivate the land.

I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

Damn it all you can't have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of silver.

To believe a thing is to see the cool crystal water sparkling in the cup. But to meditate on it is to drink of it. Reading gathers the clusters; contemplation squeezes forth their generous juice.

Campbell [Scott] also directed me in a film with Hope Davis called Final. That was the first thing we did together, but I've known him for years.

Even though I am in this weird position of being a semi-recognizable screenwriter, which isn't that common, at the same time, I'm not an actress. I'm pretty isolated.

I'm an actor. I love to act. That's my job. I'll leave the politicking to others.

Not being published would be great. When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane.

All cultural explorers. . . start off from specific roots which color their vision and define the allegiances of the work of art they produce.

Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

If you go around the league, anybody with the last name 'vich' is a great shooter. Radmanovic, Vujacic... all those 'iches.

A good woman is the loveliest flower that blooms under heaven; and we look with love and wonder upon its silent grace, its pure fragrance, its delicate bloom of beauty.