Reading and writing... are exciting. The most exciting things I can think of. And now, as I reflect... I have to say that I've been lucky in that I'm amused by what I do - sufficiently amused.

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.

She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that a midget is good at being short.

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.

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

In between the Queen and the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, sat Tony Richardson, looking very calm. Later on it emerged that this was because, having not been apprised of the placement until he was about to sit down, he had died of fright. To have expired was to be fortunate.

Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.