I don't think you can really be proud of being gay because it isn't something you've done. You can only be proud of not being ashamed.

I approach my life with logic. I do not act on impulse or emotion. I very seldom find that I say, 'And then I can't think what came over me, but I did this or that or the other.' I nearly always know how I will act and I nearly always act in that way. I don't catch myself out in embarrassing situations because I've acted without forethought. I calculate what I will do.

Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.

Manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine.

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'