The essence of a class system is not that the privileged are conscious of their privileges, but that the deprived are conscious of their deprivations.

Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.

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.

All honest labor becomes easy; it only becomes hard when done with unwillingness.

Almost 70 years have gone by, and I've still got that feeling when I write... Writing, for me, is still it. It has always been the basis of everything I do. I'm a writer who performs, not a performer who writes. I love the act of writing. It's still a thrill for me.

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

The entrée wasn't tender enough to be a paving stone and the gravy couldn't have been primordial soup because morphogenesis was already taking place.