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

I was born in Liverpool in England, and I lived there for the first nine years of my life.

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.

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.

Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish.

Figaro is a bad play. It stirs up hatred between the classes. In France, it has caused nothing but bitterness. My own dear sister,Antoinette, writes me that she is beginning to be frightened of her own people.

Librarians as a race tend to be tedious.