“Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?”

And I’ve been wearing specs since I was three.

He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.

I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.

Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness.

One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.

Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.

Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!

What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?

Childhood is a disease – a sickness that you grow out of.

the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.

One’s intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.

I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.

Even if you got rid of paper, you would still have story-tellers. In fact, you had the story-tellers before you had the paper.

We just got to go on, that’s all. That’s what grownups would do.

We’re not savages. We’re English.

Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an autobiography. That’s what you could say about it.

A foolproof plan for not getting a job.

As for getting there … it’s a choice between sinning and being tricked by demons It’s a plane of evil … despair … and magic of the foulest kind.

Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don’t leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.

I don’t want to moan about being recognised but I do get a bit of grief sometimes.

There’s a lot to do when you’re a kid – spiders to catch, girls to poke in the eye – stuff to be getting on with.

Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick.

I feel like everyone who goes to The University of Texas is blessed and lucky to be there because they’re getting a chance to be as good as they can be.

I like pubs too, but it’s hard for me to go and get proper bladdered in the way I used to.