“Are we savages or what?”

Serve you right if something did get you, you useless lot of cry-babies!

Graham Greene at 82 years old was still writing, and I don’t think anyone can deny the force, the expertise, and the unique quality of his writing, if you take his complete oeuvre.

Of the authors writing in English, I’d mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I’m afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.

There is, they say, no fool like an old fool.

Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.

There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.

His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.

Life should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.

It may be — I hope it is — redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable.

This is our island. It’s a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we’ll have fun.

The beast was harmless and horrible; and the news must reach the others as soon as possible.

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.

I dislike religion quite intensely. It’s been the cause of all the grief in the world ever since they discovered the first stone to worship.

All my dreams came true. There’s not many people that can say that. I mean, most people have to work in a job they hate all their lives, and I can’t imagine that.

Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue.

By all accounts I should be dead! The abuse I put my body through: the drugs, the alcohol, the lifestyle I’ve lived the last 30 years!

God has supplied all my needs and has not failed me once.

I learned that if I had known how much of this Nazi memorabilia there was to collect, I never would have started in the first place. It’s crowding me out of my house.

Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.

As in certain combinations so words and in all kinds of music; for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life.