You can't just say there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children

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 like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.

It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.

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.

...as absurd and dishonest as claiming that the trouble with computer games is that they stop people watching television.

A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation.