Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date? Of course they're out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.

A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.

You always know when you're going to arrive. If you go by car, you don't. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

Of course my standards are out of date! That's why they're called standards.

All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.