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

Here was my first lesson on the resolutely maintained untidiness and ill-health of the English upper orders. In baggy evening dress and old before their time, they displayed gapped and tangled teeth in loosely open mouths. Gently shedding dandruff, they lurched across the lawn. When they stood at the bar they looked like Lee Trevino Putting.

I won't have to miss smoking any more. Nobody smokes where I'm going: It's like a row of restaurants in California.

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.

This quality becomes important at a time when almost everyone is a poet. And as I said, we live in an age where almost everybody is a poet, but scarcely anyone can write a poem.

A sense of humour is common sense dancing.

I've got life for a subject because as life starts to drain away, you start seeing very clearly what life is, for the first time.