If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.

Where else? I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely.

Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for.

Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, "How are you, you old scoundrel!" clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel.

National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.

libraries are fascinating places: sometimes you feel you are under the canopy of a railway station, and when you read books about exotic places there's a feeling of travelling to distant lands

There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.