Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.

I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.

Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.

So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.

To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.

There's very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made. Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure. . . . A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth's.

At eighty things do not occur; they recur.