Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.

I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed.

The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know existed.

I don't believe that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed.

I did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live but I am told that this is a common experience.

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them...