To know you are among people whom you love, and who love you – that has made all the successes wonderful, much more wonderful than they'd have been anyway.

There are bad times just around the corner, There are dark clouds travelling through the sky, And it's no good whining, About a silver lining, For we know from experience they won't roll by...

The theatre should be treated with respect. The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda.

If you must have motivation, think of your paycheck on Friday.

I write at high speed because boredom is bad for my health.

My philosophy is as simple as ever - smoking, drinking, moderate sexual intercourse on a diminishing scale, reading and writing (not arithmetic). I have a selfish absorption in the well-being and achievement of Noel Coward.

Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.