I have always been an impassioned advocate for the works of Shakespeare. I regard him as one of the most complete miracles of his or any other age.

I don't need you to remind me of my age. I have a bladder to do that for me.

Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - 'It destroys everything around it, except itself.'

Mankind can live free in a society hemmed in by laws, but we have yet to find a historical example of mankind living free in lawless anarchy.

My first meeting with you only confirmed what I first suspected. You are a fraud, a charlatan and a shyster. My favourite kind of person, in fact.

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?

I have to mime at parties when everyone sings Happy Birthday... Mime or mumble and rumble and growl and grunt so deep that only moles, manta rays and mushrooms can hear me.