Young men especially - I don't know if young women feel much the same - but young men think they are immortal, automatically. They have no idea of time because they have so much energy and I was like that.

A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.

Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.

As a work of art, it reminds me of a long conversation between two drunks

Once, BBC television had echoed BBC radio in being a haven for standard English pronunciation. Then regional accents came in: a democratic plus. Then slipshod usage came in: an egalitarian minus. By now slovenly grammar is even more rife on the BBC channels than on ITV. In this regard a decline can be clearly charted... If the BBC, once the guardian of the English language, has now become its most implacable enemy, let us at least be grateful when the massacre is carried out with style.

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

A lot of my poems are about how ill I am and how I probably won't live beyond next week. I publish a poem and everyone says 'cluck cluck, how wonderful, how brave', but then embarrassingly I'm still here! You see the problem?