...the reality of intelligent British speech... uses blasphemus, coital and cloacal expletives as a matter of course.

Somehow, as a writer, you tend to use words to paper over structural cracks.

It is astonishing how articulate one can become when alone and raving at a radio. Arguments and counter arguments, rhetoric and bombast flow from one's lips like scurf from the hair of a bank manager.

I think faith in each other is much harder than faith in God...

It was behaviour that I thought not far from racism, sexism or any other kind of prejudice or snobbery. 'Because you are not cute, I do not want to know you' was, to me, hardly different from suggesting 'because you are gay, I dislike you

I shall sustain a massive erection, that’s what, and I shan’t be answerable for the consequences. Some kind of ejaculation is almost bound to ensue and if either of you were to become pregnant I should never forgive myself.

At John Schlesinger's funeral at a synagogue in St John's Wood some years ago the person I stood next to said to me encouragingly, 'Come on, Stephen - you're not singing. Have a go!' 'Believe me, Paul, you don't want me to,' I said. Besides, I was having a much better time listening to him. 'No. Go on!' So I joined in the chorus. 'You're right,' Paul McCartney conceded. 'You can't sing.