“The world is not the most pleasant place. Eventually, your parents leave you and nobody is going to go out of their way to protect you unconditionally.”

I hope people will think very carefully about the future.

1992 is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it hasturned out to be an Annus Horribilis.

We have all felt those emotions in these last few days. So what I say to you now, as your queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart.

To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?

It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re properly trained.

[To a woman whose cellphone rang during a formal meeting:] You’d better answer that. It could be someone important.

Work is the rent you pay for the room you occupy on earth.

The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has touched me deeply to see so many thousands of families, neighbors and friends celebrating together in such a happy atmosphere.

I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God’s Will, united in spirit and in aim.

For me, heaven is likely to be a bit of a come-down.

The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load.

I should like to be a horse.

I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

You need to learn to stand up for yourself and what you believe and sometimes, pardon my language, kick some ass.

Football’s a difficult business and aren’t they prima donnas. But it’s a wonderful game.

And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie.

There are probably a few library fines I haven’t paid yet, but I’m a pretty clean-cut guy overall.

It’s very evocative; it’s like a first cut because you hear ‘She walked to the door,’ and you visualize all these things. ‘She opens the door’ . . . because you read the stage directions, too.

A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don’t trust reading the scripts that much.

Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions.

I ask the American people not to fall victim to disinformation. There are no death panels. The Affordable Care Act cuts the deficit.

It is a voice that cuts you like a razor, but you can still hear the innocence in it, a claim to purity that soars out of the garbage of her throat, carrying evil harmonies.

If you want to recapture your youth, just cut off his allowance.