Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality.

Because I was a young man so, of course, I did get into fights. The last time I actually was in a fight, in the sense of throwing punches myself, was probably when I was at college, not since 1980. But I remember being attacked quite a few times in the '80s.

Sometimes it occurs to me that the job of a serious cultural critic mostly consists in telling the generality of people that their opinions - on films, on books, on all manner of widgets, gadgets and even the latest electronic fidgets - simply aren't up to scratch.

Lives don't divide up into chapters. People don't just talk, while nothing's going on in their head, and then respond. You know, none of these things actually happen.

The cynics are correct the sense of freewill is only that feeling which we have when we take the necessitated option that most appeals to us.

Whatever respect photography may once have deserved is now superfluous in view of its own superfluity.

Schadenfreude is so nutritious.