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

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.

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.

Mocking Hugh Hefner is easy to do, and in my mind should be made easier.

The repeat run of Fawlty Towers (BBC2) drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of the Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics.

Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.