Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

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

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.

Exhibitionists have no friends, no friends at all.

I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share.

When I was young, I wanted to find the Great Dark Man. When I said that I realise now that people thought that by 'dark' I meant black, and that by 'great' I meant big. Whereas I only meant a strong, mysterious person; someone who would 'take me away from all this.'

Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.