“Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.”

The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.

Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.

It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.

And one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.

I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.

The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house.

Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion.

Why is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?

If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.

Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”

Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.

Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.

My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.

I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.

Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.

I have learned not to overlook the advantages of being me. From when I was a softball player, and I held the stolen bases record.

I mean, I’ve been stupid in the past, and I’ve learned from that.

You should learn to be happy with what you have. Besides, the fact that I’m not a huge star has allowed me to pick and choose the roles I want to do, not the ones some person sitting in a studio office thinks I should do.

I think that training is important. I think you need to learn as much as you can learn.

I don’t care. I mean, I’ve been stupid in the past, and I’ve learned from that.

In order to learn, comprehend and rediscover that I can be and I want to be better at every moment.

I’m sure they learn a lot, and some of them, it makes them aware of what they wish to do. I was – that’s the way I was – autodidact.

You must learn to drink the cup of life as it comes … without stirring it up from the bottom. That’s where the bitter dregs are!