“My heroes are the non-commissioned officers. If I had another life thats what Id be – a regimental sergeant major or a similar rank. Thats where the spirit of the armed forces is.”

I got a tooth bust by somebody who decided they didn’t like me and I thought the moustache hid a scar on my lip. It’s true that people were told facial hair was not appreciated by the British public, but I just decided to keep the moustache.

Failure in Afghanistan would have profound consequences for our national security. It would undermine the NATO alliance structure that has been the bedrock of Britain’s defence for the last 60 years… I will not allow this to happen on my watch.

Music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.

What’s good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.

One man’s wage increase is another man’s price increase.

We are not retreating – we are advancing in another direction.

The dimmed outlines of phenomenal things all merge into one another unless we put on the focusing-glass of theory, and screw it up sometimes to one pitch of definition and sometimes to another, so as to see down into different depths through the great millstone of the world.

The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful.

There are some achievements which are never done in the presence of those who hear of them. Catching salmon is one, and working all night is another.

My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.