Music takes me to places of illimitable sensual and insensate joy, accessing points of ecstasy that no angelic lover could ever locate, or plunging me into gibbering weeping hells of pain that no torturer could ever devise".

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

There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is.

The most important philosophy I think is that even if it isn't true you must absolutely assume there is no afterlife.

Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. 'And what did you do?' asks Saint Peter. 'Well', says the dead soul. 'I criticised things'. 'I beg your pardon?' 'You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, "thin and unconvincing", "turgid and uninspired", "competent and serviceable,"...you know'.

Homosexuals are not interested in making other people homosexuals. Homophobes are interested in making other people homophobes.

Perhaps the greatest definition I think of character and quality is people who when they're truly great rather than making you feel that tall they make you feel that tall, that they're greatness as it were improves you.