I knew I couldn't believe in God, because I was fundamentally Hellenic in my outlook.

As I say I don't want to kill myself, I just wouldn't mind dying.

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

You can't reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.

Norwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it.

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

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.