I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.

Oh, it takes a lot for me to walk out of a film.

Supporting the English cricket team is like supporting a second division football team. I support Norwich City football team and when they lose I really don't mind because I expect them to; but when we win I'm so happy - much happier than any Arsenal supporter could ever be.

I believe that poetry is a primal impulse within us all.

Great and good men and women stirred sugar into their coffee knowing that it had been picked by slaves. Kind, good ancestors of all of us never questioned hangings, burnings, tortures, inequality, suffering and injustice that today revolt us. If we dare to presume to damn them with our fleeting ideas of morality, then we risk damnation from our descendants for whatever it is that we are doing that future history will judge as intolerable and wicked: eating meat, driving cars, appearing on TV, visiting zoos, who knows?

A university is not, thank heavens, a place for vocational instruction, it has nothing to do with training for a working life and career, it is a place for education, something quite different.

Nature admits no hierarchy of beauty or usefulness or importance.