“It just happens I write fast and always have done.”

Our friends in America will be at the front of the queue for trade deals.

In 1904, 20 per cent of journeys were made by bicycle in London. I want to see a figure like that again. If you can’t turn the clock back to 1904, what’s the point of being a Conservative?

If we judged everybody by the stupid, unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn’t ever get anywhere.

Some people think that it [Brexit] is the end of the world. It’s not. On the contrary, it’s a massive opportunity for this country.

All the people I talk to, increasingly, can see that the emperor has got no clothes. The case for leaving [the EU] is now overwhelming.

I would ban sweets from school – but this pressure to bring in healthy food is too much.

We celebrate the contribution of people who have come to this country to make it better.

It is easy to make promises – it is hard work to keep them.

Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.

It is possible to have a pretty good life and career being a leech and a parasite in the media world, gadding about from TV studio to TV studio, writing inconsequential pieces and having a good time.

My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.

It was the kind of blind, gulping, insensate greed that you associate with some milk-eyed creature in a volcanic fissure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench-an organism with no understanding of the existence, let alone the feelings, of other members of the ecosystem.

This is not a time to quail, it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt. But it is a moment for hope.

I have not been more robust towards female rather than male assembly members and I do not believe I have been remotely sexist.

London is a fantastic creator of jobs – but many of these jobs are going to people who don’t originate in this country.

The next Tory leader would have to unify his party and ensure that Britain stood tall in the world.

That includes people who call themselves Muslims but who don’t lead their lives as such – people who drink, who don’t pray, who don’t fast, who have constantly changing partners and who are unable to recite the Koran.

The love I have for you burns faster than a forest fire.

From writing rapidly it does not result that one writes well, but from writing well it results that one writes rapidly.

The Tao is in all things, in their divisions and their fullness. What I dislike about divisions is that they multiply, and what i dislike about multiplication is that it makes people want to hold fast to it. So people go out and forget to return, seeing little more than ghosts.

Non-action is unceasing activity. The sage is characterized by eternal and intense activity. His stillness is like the apparent stillness of a fast rotating gyroscope.

But I marvel when I observe these men setting themselves up as instructors of youth who cannot see that they are applying the analogy of an art with hard and fast rules to a creative process

He smiled, and just like that, I fell in love – hard and fast.

It was unexpected. That’s just how it was. I don’t believe they were faster than us. I don’t believe they had more heart or dedication. It just fell on their side. That’s the reality of it.