Visitors who come from the Soviet Union and tell you how marvelous it is to be able to look at public buildings without advertisements stuck all over them are just telling you that they can't decipher the cyrillic alphabet.

Reading and writing... are exciting. The most exciting things I can think of. And now, as I reflect... I have to say that I've been lucky in that I'm amused by what I do - sufficiently amused.

I love reading about the sea. I love reading about it a lot more than actually being on the sea, when you think about it.

It is a good rule in life to be wary of the company of people who think of themselves in the third person, no matter how well justified they might seem to be in doing so.

It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.

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

One of the virtues of the NHS... it doesn't worry you about money at the moment when you're least capable of doing anything about it.