“Jimmy: One day, when I'm no longer spending my days running a sweet-stall, I may write a book about us all. It's all here. (slapping his forehead) Written in flames a mile high. And it won't be recollected in tranquillity either, picking daffodils with Auntie Wordsworth. It'll be recollected in fire, and blood. My blood.”

“Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We've only got ourselves. Somehow, we've just got to make a go of it. We've only ourselves.”

“Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building.”

“Heaven be thanked, we live in such an age when no man dies for love except upon the stage.”

“The school teacher is certainly underpaid as a child minder but ludicrously overpaid as an educator.”

“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.", October 31, 1977]”

“Jimmy: One day, when I'm no longer spending my days running a sweet-stall, I may write a book about us all. It's all here. (slapping his forehead) Written in flames a mile high. And it won't be recollected in tranquillity either, picking daffodils with Auntie Wordsworth. It'll be recollected in fire, and blood. My blood.”

“That voice that cries out doesn't have to be a weakling's does it?”