“I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.”

One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.

Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.

The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.

Knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.

Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.

It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.

A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.

In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.

Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground.

It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.

Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.

Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.

Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.

Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already.

We wouldn’t be able to buy things online, because your credit cards – they’ve probably been ripped off anyway, but they would be ripped off left and right every day if there wasn’t encryption.

And anyway, the first three letters in the word diet should tell you what i want it to do.

There’s a mountain of information about us. I mean there’s so much. Anyway, I’m not an intelligence person. But I just look at it and it’s a mountain of data.

I don’t know what “normal” means, anyway.

I couldn’t care less if the guy I’m guarding has HIV. I’m going to slam him anyway.

There’s no point thinking about dying, because it’s going to happen anyway, isn’t it? I don’t waste my time worrying about that.

A man with a financial background may know nothing about manufacturing shoes or cars, but he’s put in charge anyway.

It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.