“I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?”

Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.

Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.

I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.

History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.

Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.

To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.

No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.

I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.

I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.

I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.

At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like.

Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there’s no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.

Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.

Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?

It’s like going to a place that you’ve never been to before – you’ve got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the reality.

You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated.

In every single day, in every walk of life, ordinary people do extraordinary things. Ordinary People accomplish Extraordinary things.

If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day.

A day that I don’t learn something new is a wasted day.

Looking hard for a drive in, searching for a corner cafe, where the hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day.

Each day grow older, and learn something new.

You don’t know what kind of day you will have, until evening.

May I live forever. But may you live forever and a day.

If you’re working at the factory and you’re cursing every day that you get up, at all costs get out of it. You’ll just make yourself ill.