Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation — the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

The tuba is certainly the most intestinal of instruments, the very lower bowel of music.

I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.

Rather than waste precious time arguing, I went up and started serving my "sentence" without delay. It was usually about an hour for epigrams; somewhat longer for a paradox.

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

Mrs Thicknesse and I agreed that a business of his own was probably the only solution for him because he was obviously unemployable.