The satirist isn't just looking at things ironically but militantly - he wants to change them, and intends to have an effect on the world.

The air itself was ebony, like the denial, the refutation, of the idea of light.

I'm afraid the negative things are always the great subjects. Failure is much more interesting than success.

We have a huge institution that celebrates the undistinguished, an institution which is nearly as old as the Papists. It's been going on for millennia. What else is a monarchy but a series of ridiculously exalted figures who are not necessarily distinguished at all? In fact, they have a rather philistine tradition. So perhaps we are more vulnerable to it than other countries.

No-one is going to sit down and read Bleak House to the family any more, but they can all huddle up happily in front of Charles Bronson.

Time, the human dimension, which makes us everything we are.

Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful.