Schadenfreude is so nutritious.

Once the working classes were in chains, now they're in chain restaurants.

You don't need to know this - but here goes: due to some acquired infantilism, I feel compelled to fall asleep listening to the radio. On a good night, I'll push the frail barque of my psyche off into the waters of Lethe accompanied by the midnight newsreader - on a bad one, it's the shipping forecast.

As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.

There's a flip side to having prominent public intellectuals, which is that they start meddling in politics and often with quite disastrous results.

I do have a fantasy life in which I can grout bathrooms - but not for a living.

In my view the plangent artificiality of a lot of creative work results from the fact that the people who write novels, direct films and put on plays tend to read too many novels, watch too many films and go to too many plays.