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

I think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.

Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.

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.

However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.

We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.

[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.

One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.

Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.

A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.

But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.

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

I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.

What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this.

Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.

The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.

People love nobody as much as they do their hatred.

But we have these problems in our region, and nobody has been able to resolve them.

It is in some ways the best expression of what humans are able to do. Nobody else can make that! And it’s delicious.

I think one of the defining moments of adulthood is the realization that nobody’s going to take care of you.

Nobody has it all, but for me to even come close is amazing.

. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .

I do think the job of a writer is to raise questions and nobody likes the questions being asked.

If you’re in California and it’s raining, stay home, because nobody can drive in the rain. It’s like it’s raining frogs. They’re terrified.