There's nothing worse than the British in one of their fits of morality.

How can I tell you what I think until I've heard what I'm going to say?

I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses,but between mouthfuls. An American woman watched in disbelief. "And you so intelligent!" "Excuse me?" said tom "Knowing those things are going to kill you" she said "and still you do it." "How differently I might behave" Tom said, "if immortality were an option

We gave you a perfectly good language and you f***ed up.

I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

I found it all about as arousing as a Tupperware party.

Nowadays a lot of what was wrong with me would no doubt be ascribed to Attention Deficit Disorder, tartrazine food colouring, dairy produce and air pollution. A few hundred years earlier it would have been demons, still the best analogy I think, but not much help when it comes to a cure.