To read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another

I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It's a dying art.

Four times, under our educational rules, the human pack is shuffled and cut - at eleven-plus, sixteen-plus, eighteen-plus and twenty-plus - and happy is he who comes top of the deck on each occasion, but especially the last. This is called Finals, the very name of which implies that nothing of importance can happen after it.

Life, after all, should go forwards, not backwards.

Jogging, I believe they call it. It seems to be an epidemic psychological illness afflicting Americans these days. A form of masochism, like the flagellantes in the Middle Ages.

I never did like working out - it bears the same relationship to real sport as masturbation does to real sex

That's the attraction of the conference circuit: it's a way of converting work into play, combining professionalism with tourism, and all at someone else's expense. Write a paper and see the world! I'm Jane Austen - fly me!