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

The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.

Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin

The thing I think about is that once you’ve done it, you then start to think about what you’re going to do next.

You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.

They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury’s, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.

What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.

I’ve never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin.

Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.

I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual.

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

Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.

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.

History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.

Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.

To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.

No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.

I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else.

Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.

Hmm, should I stay on the underground when everybody else is selling out?’ Nowadays, you can just do it – have your name-brand clothes, do songs with rock n’ rollers – and it’s not considered selling out.

Someone else looks at it and sees a slightly awry phase of it. But taken all together, the truth is in what they saw though nobody saw the truth intact.

The things you do for a woman you wouldn’t do for anything else. Same with money.

Perhaps I’m not a good actor, but I would be even worse at doing anything else.

I had no desire to be an film actress, to always play somebody else, to be always beautiful with somebody constantly straightening out your every eyelash. It was always a big bother to me.

I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself… something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.