I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today — whatever that may be....

I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself – simply an urge...

I’m fat because I’m greedy, and if my mind is fat it’s because I’m curious.

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

There is simply no limit to the tyrannical snobbery that otherwise decent people can descend into when it comes to music.

We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know...

I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of...

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

Entirely in accordance with what education is supposed to be. Education is the sum of what students teach each other in between lectures and seminars. You sit in each other’s rooms and drink coffee –...

Look at the kind of people who most object to the childishness and cheapness of celebrity culture. Does one really want to side with such apoplectic and bombastic bores? I should know, I often catch...

Sex without smiling is as sickly and as base as vodka and tonic without ice.

There were people who believed their opportunities to live a fulfilled life were hampered by the number of Asians in England, by the existance of a royal family, by the volume of traffic that passed...

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.

Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a...

Wine can be a better teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books

I like to think of this little [newspaper] column as a brassière, or do I mean brasserie? Brazier, possibly. All three! A column that lifts, separates, supports, serves excellent cappuccino and crackles merrily with sweet-smelling...

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?

Forget ideas, Mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use?

It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with.

There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and...

…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.

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.

It’s the strangest thing about this church – it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we, with our permissive society and rude jokes, are obsessed. No. We have a healthy attitude....

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

But an Adrian also knew that an Adrian’s lies were real: they were lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another man’s truths – if other men had truths – and he believed...

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful...

You are who you are when nobody’s watching.

Well I don’t know about you, but when I recall childhood pain, I don’t recall the pains of toothache, a thrashed backside, broken bones, stubbed toes, gashed knees or twisted ankles – I recall the...

An original idea. That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them.

Nature admits no hierarchy of beauty or usefulness or importance.

there is no reason why anyone should understand how it works… and of course no reason why anyone should care … unless you are curious, in which case I love you, for curiosity about the...

It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language,...

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

Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.

They had been there. I had seen my mother’s anxious face, desperate to catch my eye and give me a warm smile. I had tried to smile back, but I had not known how. That...

No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.

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

There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough...

Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins – is self pity. Self pity is the worst...

I cannot bear natural light when I’m writing.

He had just reached the pavement and gave now the smallest, quickest of glances back up the hill, in our direction. Our eyes didn’t meet, but I saw that he was even more beautiful than...

Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity.

It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning;...

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

People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t

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

The biggest challenge facing the great teachers and communicators of history is not to teach history itself, nor even the lessons of history, but why history matters. How to ignite the first spark of the...

I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses,but between mouthfuls. An American woman watched in disbelief.”And you so intelligent!””Excuse me?” said...

My first words, as I was being born […] I looked up at my mother and said, ‘that’s the last time I’m going up one of those.

It does not suit the world to hear that people who are leading a high life, an enviable life, a privileged life are as miserable most days as anybody else, despite the fact that it...