Sick of being a prisoner of my childhood, I want to put it behind me.

Ban poetry. And make sure that anyone caught reading it is expelled from school. Then it will acquire the glamour.

The Language Laboratory at Cambridge is a very good way of finding out about grammar and the vocabulary and that's why I learned to read German and later on I added Spanish, the standard European languages.

Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones.

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.

In the twelfth century the Basque fishermen of Biarritz used to hunt whales with deadly efficiency. When the whales sensibly moved away, the Basques chased them further and further, with the consequence that the fishermen of Biarritz discovered America before Columbus did. This is a matter for local pride but on a larger view it is not quite so stunning, since with the possible exception of the Swiss everybody discovered America before Columbus did.

People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways.