“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.”

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Of course my standards are out of date!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.

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.

I wish we could be 100% shielded from danger, but nothing is in life.

I have heard endlessly that fish are so resilient that there is no way that you could exterminate a species. We are learning otherwise.

I count my blessings every day, quite honestly, because I take nothing for granted.

As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything.

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

I could never take orders from anyone.

I wish I could say I see my little brother more.

But I always believed that I could be something special. I just had to prove it to myself.