Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.

It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going.

Bath twice a day to be really clean, once a day to be passably clean, once a week to avoid being a public menace.

Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets.

If you want to be considered a poet, you will have to show mastery of the petrarchan sonnet form or the sestina. Your musical efforts must begin with well-formed fugues. There is no substitute for craft... Art begins with craft, and there is no art until craft has been mastered.

Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy.

A word in a dictionary is very much like a car in a mammoth motor show - full of potential but temporarily inactive.