Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.

If we want a book to do more than what it does, that's a condemnation. If we want it to do more of what it does, that's an endorsement.

Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.

Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.

Whoever called snooker "chess with balls" was rude, but right.

As far as talent goes, Marilyn Monroe was so minimally gifted as to be almost unemployable, and anyone who holds to the opinion that she was a great natural comic identifies himself immediately as a dunce.

Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film.