You can never get a woman to sit down and listen to a drum solo.

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

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.

Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.

Disco dancing is just the steady thump of a giant moron knocking in an endless nail.

Like most people who smoked umpteen cigarettes a day, I tasted only the first one. The succeeding umpteen minus one were a compulsive ritual which had no greater savour than the fumes of burning money.

The great thing about living until you get a bit older if you are a writer, and especially a poet, is that you have more life to reflect on. And I think that if I am better now - and I think that I am probably better than I was - is because that I simply have more to think about, more to get under control, more to understand.