Just as it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, it is the belief in shamefulness that is the root of all misery.

We keep our insignificant blemishes so that we can blame them for our larger defects.

I think it was Harry Walpole who remarked, "In this life one should try everything once except incest and country dancing.

[his healing skills] ..lay in the ability to comfort, to comfort in the proper sense, to make strong, to fortify

Feelings are not something to which one does or does not have rights.

I was happy there. Which is to say I was not unhappy there. Unhappiness and happiness I have always been able to carry about with me, irrespective of place and people, because I have never joined in.

Late, Fry?’ ‘Really, sir? So am I.’ ‘Don’t try to be clever, boy.’ ‘Very good, sir. How stupid would you like me to be? Very stupid or only slightly stupid?

I also knew that he was the kind of anile little runt who, in foyers and theatre bars the West End over, can be heard bleating into their gin and tonics, "I go to the theatre to be entertained.

You have already achieved the English-Language poet's most important goal: you can read, Write and speak English well enough to understand this sentence.

Either a municipal bog is a private place or it isn't. If it is a private place in which to shit, how is it not a private place in which to fellate?

It was a Tuesday in February. Many my life's most awful moments have taken place on Tuesdays. And what is February if not the Tuesday of the year?

My real dissatisfaction is with my dissatisfaction. How dare I be so discontent? How dare I? Or being discontent why cannot I shut up about it?

Anger fed him and clothed him and he owed it much.

Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.

Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship’.

All gone. All anger quelled, all desire drained, all thirst slaked, all madness past.

There can't be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn't room. There can't be.

Like a Frenchman, far from home, catching a whiff of Gauloise.

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.

Read it wisely, Little One, for the power of ignorance is great.

You can't just say there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children.

I cannot bear natural light when I'm writing.

Nature admits no hierarchy of beauty or usefulness or importance.

You don't sit down and write a wish list about the person you are going to fall violently in love with. It just doesn't work like that.

Nobody seems to understand that in such matters the tact and sympathy should come from the one who is about to die, not the poor bugger who has to take the news.

Knowing those things are going to kill you," she said, "and still you do it." "How differently I might behave," Tom said, "if immortality were an option.

It was a Tuesday in February. Many of my life's most awful moments have taken place on Tuesdays. And what is February if not the Tuesday of the year?

It is a clich that most clich s are true, but then like most clich s, that clich is untrue

Between funny and witty Falls the shadow

Life, that can shower you with so much slendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.

It is complete loose stool water. It is arse-gravy of the worst kind. - About "The Da Vinci Code

Poetry is not made to be sucked up like a child's milkshake, it is much better sipped like a precious malt whisky.

A month's salary, deep regret, the telephone number of some foul rehab clinic and my lance was free.

Little girls grow up to be women, little boys grow up to be little boys.

Thos who rule the world get so little opportunity to run about and laugh and play in it.

Glory never arrives through the front door. She sneaks in uninvited round the back or through an upstairs window while you are sleeping.

It's enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind.

This is the point. One technology doesn't replace another, it complements. Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.

Estate agents: like them or loathe them, you'd be mad not to loathe them.

A university is not, thank heavens, a place for vocational instruction, it has nothing to do with training for a working life and career, it is a place for education, something quite different.

...Catholic versus Protestant, essentially. It's that kind of fight. ... And it goes on to this day. Will we never learn? Who knows? Religion. Shit it.

You can never hope to recapture the first fine careless rapture

It would be impossible to imagine going through life without swearing, and without enjoying swearing.

You've just had the most imponderable joy of watching charlieissocoollike, which makes you, like, cool.

You should give up.' 'Why?' 'For one thing, you'll live longer.' 'Oh, you don't live longer. It just seems longer.

I was born Mary Patterson, but then I married and naturally took my husband's name, so now I'm Neil Patterson.

I found it all about as arousing as a Tupperware party.

We gave you a perfectly good language and you f***ed up.

Cynical is the name we give those we fear may be laughing at us.

Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word's full octave