The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.

If you don't know when to be a human being, you don't know when to be a witch.

I’m not superstitious. I’m a witch. Witches aren’t superstitious. We are what people are superstitious of.

Sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.

They can ta'k our lives but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one.

I must have read every issue of 'Punch' published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour - that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like 'Three Men in a Boat.'