We tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense.

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.

There is no prayer greater than service.

Don’t let your day dreams become your personally living nightmare.

A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.

The roof of my house is covered in solar panels. When Im home, Im a pretty green fellow.

The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.

I tend to pull nuggets out of many books - rather than having a handful of books that serve as guiding lights.

Budget: a way of going broke methodically

0 summer friendship, whose flat-tering leaves shadowed us in our prosperity, With the least gust, drop off in the autumn of adversity.

London! the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome! With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state.

Love is nourished only by sacrifices, and the more a soul refuses natural satisfactions, the stronger and more disinterested becomes her tenderness.