If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.

Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.

The world we know at present is in no fit state to take over the dreariest little meteor ... If we have the courage and patience, the energy and skill, to take us voyaging to other planets, then let us use some of these to tidy up and civilize this earth. One world at a time, please.

To love to teach is one thing, to love those you teach is another.

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.

I have always been a grumbler. I am designed for the part - sagging face, weighty underlip, rumbling, resonant voice. Money couldn't buy a better grumbling outfit.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.