All my wife has ever taken from the Mediterranean - from that whole vast intuitive culture - are four bottles of Chianti to make into lamps, and two china condiment donkeys labelled Sally and Peppy.

Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art.

I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.

You can't always let people do their own thing.

A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave.

It's an extraordinary thing about Mozart is that you never tire of him... he never bores me, and he doesn't... not only bore me, that's too strong a word.

It is very, very difficult for a playwright to write a scene in which a young man has his first deep experience of sex with a girl whom he found immensely attractive, is fully satisfied by this event and gets up and blinds a lot of horses.