When you've seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists.

You can never hope to recapture the first fine careless rapture as the poet put it, but it stays with you like a good acid trip.

I do think it's important not to be absolutely sure, so sure that you can't reinvent yourself in some way, or at least rediscover the truth of why you think what you think, and not just take it as an assumption.

The Gay News critic wrote that I 'carried the lilt of the Irish without the brogue'.

Having been an actor and a writer for so long - 20 years or so - I felt that it would be daft to go to one's grave without having directed. It's a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day.

I don't believe there is a God. If I were to believe in a god, l would believe in gods.

Lectures broke into one's day and were clearly a terrible waste of time, necessary no doubt if you were reading law or medicine or some other vocational subject, but in the case of English, the natural thing to do was talk a lot, listen to music, drink coffee and wine, read books, and go to plays, perhaps be in plays.