Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died. A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember. Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.

God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!

Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.

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.

It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.

I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?

f they'd been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn't have known they were born if they'd not towed the line!