If the humanism that makes civilization civilized is to be preserved into the new century, it will need advocates. These advocates will need a memory, and part of that memory will need to be of an age in which they were not yet alive.

All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish.

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

Every sentence he manages to utter scatters its component parts like pond water from a verb chasing its own tail.

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.

Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.

Freedom and diversity guard each other, and if a country could form the whole of one's character, Napoleon III and Victor Hugo would have been the same person... if national identity means anything, it means something that comes with you wherever you go, and stays with you no matter how long you stay away.