“The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam’s scheme of things. “The thing is,” I said finally, “he won the Nobel Prize.” “Well,” she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, “I’m not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat.””

It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.

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Standards are always out of date.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.

If you can last until you’re 40 years old, hopefully you’ll be mature enough to figure out the rest of the years.

I didn’t believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn’t prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit.

Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure.

Two-thirds of American movies are extensions of commercials — they tell you how to feel and they tell you how to think — rather than letting you figure it out on your own.

You’ll be a lot less likely to be caught up in bias or prejudice or be influenced by people who ask you to hand over your brains, your soul or your money because they have everything all figured out for you.

It’s not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It’s a picture of somebody trying to figure things out.

I was always interested in figuring things out. I’d do experiments, like combining things I found around the house to see what would happen if I put them together.

Love and politics are the two great figures of social engagement.