First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.

All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish.

The British secret service was staffed at one point almost entirely by alcoholic homosexuals working for the KGB

In London there was no home cooking worthy of the name. When you were in funds you ate out. But only the people whose faces appeared in such publications as Town and Queen could afford to eat in restaurants serving food which would leave them looking and feeling better instead of worse.

Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.

Perhaps I should have pointed out more often that without her (mother's) guidance and example I might have gone straight from short pants to Long Bay Gaol, which in those days was still in use and heavily populated by larcenous young men who had chosen their parents less wisely.

Spending all my remaining money on a ticket to Florence was rendered needlessly complicated by the fact that none of the ticket-sellers had ever heard of the place. At last their supervisor showed up and set them straight by informing them that the city they had always referred to as 'Firenze' was in reality called Florence.