Humorists

"Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions."

"Special Correspondence. I learn from a very high authority, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, (speaking to me at a place which I am not allowed to indicate and in a language which I am forbidden to use)—that Austria-Hungary is about to take a diplomatic step of the highest importance. What this step is, I am forbidden to say. But the consequences of it—which unfortunately I am pledged not to disclose—will be such as to effect results which I am not free to enumerate."

"Americans are queer people: they can't rest."

"The Lord said "Let there be wheat" and Saskatchewan was born."

"With the thermometer at 30 below zero and the wind behind him, a man walking on Main Street in Winnipeg knows which side of him is which."

"It is to be observed that "angling" is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish."

"Presently I shall be introduced as 'this venerable old gentleman' and the axe will fall when they raise me to the degree of 'grand old man'. That means on our continent any one with snow-white hair who has kept out of jail till eighty."

"I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so."

"It takes a good deal of physical courage to ride a horse. This, however, I have. I get it at about forty cents a flask, and take it as required."

"The rushing of his spirit from its prison-house was as rapid as a hunted cat passing over a garden fence."

"You know, many a man realizes late in life that if when he was a boy he had known what he knows now, instead of being what he is he might be what he won't; but how few boys stop to think that if they knew what they don't know instead of being what they will be, they wouldn't be?"

"You frequently ask, where are the friends of your childhood, and urge that they shall be brought back to you. As far as I am able to learn, those of your friends who are not in jail are still right there in your native village. You point out that they were wont to share your gambols, If so, you are certainly entitled to have theirs now."

"A barber is by nature and inclination a sport. He can tell you at what exact hour the ball game is to begin, can foretell its issue without losing a stroke of the razor, and can explain the points of inferiority of all the players, as compared with the better men that he has personally seen elsewhere, with the nicety of a professional."

"Many of my friends are under the impression that I write these humorous nothings in idle moments when the wearied brain is unable to perform the serious labours of the economist. My own experience is exactly the other way. The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far between. Personally, I would sooner have written "Alice in Wonderland" than the whole Encyclopaedia Britannica."

"My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them."

"Of course, Pupkin would never have thought of considering himself on an intellectual par with Mallory Tompkins. That would have been ridiculous. Mallory Tompkins had read all sorts of things and had half a mind to write a novel himself—either that or a play. All he needed, he said, was to have a chance to get away somewhere by himself and think. Every time he went away to the city Pupkin expected that he might return with the novel all finished; but though he often came back with his eyes red from thinking, the novel as yet remained incomplete."

"Borrowing has a bad name, but you would be surprised how it helps in a pinch."

"I borrow to pay my honest debts and not to squander foolishly. What's more, I confine my borrowing to those who can well afford it. I don't go around sponging on widows and orphans unless they have plenty."

"I think you are absolutely right about everything, except I think humor springs from rage, hay fever, overdue rent and miscellaneous hell."

"I hear so many things about who I am supposed to be I hardly know what to believe. I am willing to tell all, but what Is it? Doubtless all these myths and legends will be straightened out eventually, but It may take years."

"I am billed as a humorist, but of course I am a tragedian at heart."

"I only know that all is lost, and that nothing can help me unless I inherit money, strike oil or go to work."

"Ah, well! We live and learn, or, anyway, we live."

"The Modern Man or Nervous Wreck is the highest of all mammals because anyone can see that he is. There are about 2,000,000,000 Modern Men, or too many. The Modern Man's highly developed brain has made him what he is and you know what he is. [Footnote: It is because of his brain that he has risen above the animals. Guess which animals he has risen above.]"

"[Footnote:]Each male has from 2 to 790 females with whom he discusses current events. Of these he marries from 3 to 17."

"All Modern Men are descended from a Wormlike creature but it shows more on some people."

"Aristotle described the Crow as chaste. In some departments of knowledge, Aristotle was too innocent for his own good."

"Male penguins are unfaithful up to an advanced age, a phenomenon sometimes attributed to the sea air."

"[Footnote:] The Dotterel weighs only four ounces. It has long been a scientific riddle how so much wrong-headedness can manage to exist in so small a space. Still, there's the Least Gnatcatcher."

"[Footnote:] Other foolish birds include the Semipalmated Plover, the Marbled Godwit, the Carolina Mosshead, the Tasmanian Googlenose and the Fool Hen or Franklin Grouse of the Rockies."

"To the seeing eye life is mostly Sparrows."

"The male is colored much more gorgeously than the female so that he can be shot and made into feather embroidery."

"[Footnote:] Much still remains to be learned about his sex life because the Hummingbird is quicker than the eye."

"[Footnote:] Aristotle maintains that the neck of the Lion is composed of a single bone. Aristotle knew nothing at all about Lions, a circumstance which did not prevent him from writing a good deal on the subject."

"[Footnote:] To give the Beaver his due, he does things because he has to do them, not because he believes that hard work per se will somehow make him a better Beaver -- the Beaver may be dumb, but he is not that dumb! The Beaver was made to gnaw, and gnaw he does. There you have him in a nutshell."

"[Footnote:] Pliny the Elder described a Whale called "Balaena or Whirlpool, which is so long and broad as to take up more in length and breadth than two acres of ground." This brings up again the old question: Are the classics doomed? Our ancestors believed that four years of this sort of information would inevitably produce a President, or at least a Cabinet Member. It didn't seem to work out that way."

"The Zebra is striped all over so that the Lion can see him and eat him. Some people say he is striped so that the Lion can not see him. These people believe that the stripes of the Zebra simulate the bars of sunlight falling through the tall jungle grasses and that therefore the Zebra is invisible and that the earth is flat."

"The father guards the nest and fans it with his pectoral fins until the children are able to shift for themselves. Then he eats them. [Footnote: He does this because of his altruistic (parental) instinct. The higher one rises in the vertebrate scale the more altruistic one becomes. The higher vertebrates are just one mass of altruism.]"

"Even as a child back in Indiana, whenever I took a Butterbelly off the hook I used to ask myself, "Does this fish think?" I would even ask others, "Do you suppose this Butterbelly can think?" And all I would get in reply was a look. At the age of eighteen, I left the state."

"[Footnote:] The female of any species is generally regarded as a relatively anabolic organism, more passive than the male, who is relatively katabolic and active. The fact remains that one frequently runs across a rather katabolic female."

"[Footnote:] The head of a Pike, served at supper, is said to have caused the death from terror of Theodoric the Goth, who imagined the fish's features to be those of Symmachus, a man he had just killed. But for this story, we of today would have no idea what Symmachus looked like."

"As Darwin puts it in The Descent of Man, "Male snakes, though appearing so sluggish, are amorous." Isn't that just like Darwin? It was one of his main ideas, you know, that the males of almost all animals have stronger passions than the females. Since then we've learned a thing or two. At any rate, the female snake is right there when spring arrives in the woods."

"[Footnote:] We have no Common Vipers in the United States, but we have worse."

"Other countries may boast of this and that, but nobody can touch the United States for poisonous snakes. We have about twenty species, most of them deadly, and Europe has only five or six, none of them much good. We have fifteen kinds of Rattlesnakes alone and nobody else has even one. [Footnote: There is a species in Central and South America, but it probably came from here.]"

"[Footnote:] A few Cobras in your home will soon clear it of Rats and Mice. Of course, you will still have the Cobras."

"[Footnote:] Most people erroneously call this snake the Puff Adder, Beach Adder, or Blowing Viper. So, naturally, they kill it."

"If you annoy the Hog-nosed Snake enough, he will roll over on his back and play dead. If you turn him right-side up, he will roll over to prove that he is dead. [Footnote:] While he is playing dead, you can go straight up to him and step on his head or smash him with a big club."

"[Footnote:] The Chameleon's face reminded Aristotle of a Baboon. Aristotle wasn't much of a looker himself."

"[Footnote:] Three million alligators were killed in Florida between 1880 and 1900. Goody!"

"Right here I might offer a word of advice to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, now the rarest bird on the North American continent and one that is going to come in for more and more attention. Keep away from bird lovers, fellows, or you'll be standing on a little wooden pedestal with a label containing your full name in Latin: Campephilus principalis. People will be filing past admiring your glossy blue-black feathers, your white stripes and patches, your nasal plumes in front of lores, your bright red crest and your beady yellow eyes. You'll be in the limelight, but you won't know it. I don't want to alarm you fellows, but there are only about twenty of you alive as I write these lines, but there are more than two hundred of you in American museums and in collections owned by Ivory-billed Woodpecker enthusiasts. Get it?"

"The Age of Reptiles ended because it had gone on long enough and it was all a mistake in the first place. A better day was dawning at the close of the Mesozoic Era. There were some little warm-blooded animals around which had been stealing and eating the eggs of the Dinosaurs, and they were gradually learning to steal other things, too. Civilization was just around the corner."

"During the Cretaceous Period many of the inland seas dried up, leaving the Plesiosaurs stranded without any fish. Just about that time Mother Nature scrapped the whole Age of Reptiles and called for a new deal. And you can see what she got. [Footnote: Here we see the working of another Law of Nature: No water, no fish.]"

"We do not really know why the Woolly Mammoth became extinct. Early Man killed some of them, of course. But most of the time Early Man stayed right in his cave, holding hands with Early Woman. I wouldn't know what the Woolly Mammoth did about that sort of thing. Not nearly enough, I suspect."

"The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for."

"[Footnote:] An Ant on a hot stove-lid runs faster than an Ant on a cold one. Who wouldn't?"

"The Ancient Egyptians considered it good luck to meet a swarm of Bees on the road. What they considered bad luck I couldn't say."

"Then there's the law that any person found carrying a Swanhook, the same being neither a Swanherd in good standing nor accompanied by two certified Swanherds, or Swannerds (or Swanners, or Swanmasters), of known probity, should cough up thirteen shillings fourpence, three shillings fourpence going to the informer and the rest to the King. This looked like a fine bit of legislation until it developed that you can't collect from such people. They haven't got it. That's why they're out stealing Swans."

"[Footnote:] Pliny the Elder perished in 79 A.D. when he refused to flee from the great eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, insisting that everything would be all right. It wasn't."

"Egypt has been called the Gift of the Nile. Once every year the river overflows its banks, depositing a layer of rich alluvial soil on the parched ground. Then it recedes and soon the whole countryside, as far as the eye can reach, is covered with Egyptologists."

"The Egyptians of the First Dynasty were already civilized in most respects. They had hieroglyphics, metal weapons for killing foreigners, numerous government officials, death, and taxes."

"Although this structure [the Great Pyramid of Giza] failed as a tomb, it is one of the wonders of the world even today because it is the largest thing ever built for the wrong reason."

"He [Khufu] had discovered the fact that if you tell somebody to do something, nine times out of ten he will do it."

"[About experts' disbelief that Egyptians could build pyramids] It hardly seems possible that the ancient Egyptians were as smart as these experts. Still, they went right ahead and did it, and you can draw your own conclusions."

"The fact is that building a pyramid is fairly easy, aside from the lifting. You just pile up stones in receding layers, placing one layer carefully upon another, and pretty soon you have a pyramid. You can't help it. In other words, it is not in the nature of a pyramid to fall down. [Footnote: It probably could not fall down if it tried.]"

"Egyptologists say they have no idea what Khufu was doing when he was not building pyramids, since he left no inscriptions describing his daily activities, and they would give a good deal to know. Then they say he had six wives and a harem full of concubines. They do not seem to make the connection, but you get it and I get it. We do not need any hieroglyphics to inform us that Khufu dropped around occasionally to see how things were getting along and to tell the ladies how many cubic yards of limestone he had laid that afternoon."

"He [Thutmose III] went to Asia with his army and killed the natives to his heart's content, and stole so much of their goods that Egypt was rolling in wealth for quite a while. Thutmose III was thus one of the earliest exponents of internationalism, or going into other countries and slaughtering the inhabitants."

"They [Xanthippus, Aristides the Just, and Themistocles] all won lasting renown by constantly accusing one another of peculation and fraud and calling names at election time."

"[Footnote] Pericles immediately banished his strongest rival, Cimon, who had achieved popularity by bringing the bones of Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur, back to Athens from the island of Scyros. As Theseus was a myth, he could hardly have had any bones. Nevertheless, Cimon brought them back."

"Pericles was the people's friend. [Footnote: The very poorest citizens had a chance to become President, but somehow they didn't. It may have been just a coincidence.] He was so fond of the people that he paid them to go to the Assembly and vote, and they were so fond of him that they elected him year after year."

"He [Pericles] reduced the power of the Council of the Areopagus, a group of feeble old men who held their jobs for life and whose duty it was to declare everything null and void… [Footnote] He also revoked their right to censor the private lives of the citizens. This was nasty of Pericles, for about the only pleasure the old fellows had was catching some citizen doing what he shouldn't. After that, they had to use their imaginations."

"As the average Athenian citizen was not awfully bright, it was necessary to have a great many of them on each jury. … They did not have to prove that they were completely ignorant before they were accepted as jurymen. That was taken for granted."

"Alexander III of Macedonia was born in 356 B.C., on the sixth day of the month of Lous. He is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time. (Footnote) He did this in order to impress Greek culture upon them. Alexander was not strictly a Greek and he was not cultured, but that was his story, and who am I to deny it?"

"He [Philip II] subdued the Greeks after they had knocked themselves out in the Peloponnesian War and appointed himself Captain General so that he could uphold the ideals of Hellas. The main ideal of Hellas was to get rid of Philip, but he didn't count that one."

"Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons."

"[Footnote] He [Alexander] was often extremely brutal to his captives, whom he sold into slavery, tortured to death, or forced to learn Greek."

"The Romans were stern and dignified, living hard, frugal lives and adhering to the traditional Latin virtues, gravitas, pietas, simplicitas, and adultery."

"[Footnote] Carthage was governed by its rich men and was therefore a plutocracy. Rome was also governed by its rich men and was therefore a republic."

"[Footnote] The Phoenicians employed an alphabet of twenty-one consonants. They left no literature. You can't be literary without a few vowels."

"Hamilcar also told Hannibal about elephants and how you must always have plenty of these clubhouse to scare the enemy. He attributed much of his own success to elephants and believed they would have won the First Punic War for him if things hadn't gone slightly haywire; for the war had turned into a naval affair. But even when the fighting was on land, the Romans did not scare nearly so well as expected. The Romans had learned about elephants while fighting Pyrrhus, whose elephants defeated him in 275 B.C., and even before that, in Alexander's time, King Porus had been undone by his own elephants. Thus, if history had taught any one thing up to that time, it was never to use elephants in war."

"Then Hamilcar … was drowned in 228 B.C. while crossing a stream with a herd of elephants."

"Taking elephants across the Alps is not as much fun as it sounds. The Alps are difficult enough when alone, and elephants are peculiarly fitted for not crossing them."

"Whenever a thousand or so of his men would fall off an Alp, he [Hannibal] would tell the rest to cheer up, the elephants were all right. If someone had given him a shove at the right moment, much painful history might have been avoided."

"[Footnote] Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B.C., but not before or since."

"Most of the original group [of elephants] succumbed to the climate, and he [Hannibal] was always begging Carthage for more, but the people at home were stingy. They would ask if he thought they were made of elephants and what he had done with the elephants they sent before. Sometimes, when he hadn't an elephant to his name, he would manage to wangle a few from somewhere, a feat which strikes me as his greatest claim to our attention."

"And he [Hannibal] probably believed, up to the very end, that everything might still come out right if he only had a few you-know-whats."

"He [Julius Caesar] stayed in Egypt from early October until late in June settling affairs of state. It was a boy and they called him Caesarion, or Little Caesar, so Cleopatra now regarded herself as practically engaged. Caesar might have married her, but he had a wife at home. There's always something."

"[Footnote] The first of Caesar's three marriages — to Cornelia, a very rich girl — resulted tragically. Sylla, Caesar's enemy, confiscated her dowry soon after the wedding."

"In some respects, Nero was ahead of his time. He boiled his drinking water to remove the impurities and cooled it with unsanitary ice to put them back in. He renamed the month of April after himself, calling it Neroneus, but the idea never caught on because April is not Neroneus and there is no use pretending that it is. During his reign of fourteen years, the outlying provinces are said to have prospered. They were farther away."

"[Footnote] At the age of twelve Nero had shown a lively interest in the arts, particularly music, painting, sculpture, and poetry. Why was nothing done about this?"

"Attila was now sixtyish. His mind was weakening and he decided to marry again, as he had been terribly misunderstood the first three hundred times."

"Charlemagne lived away back in the Dark Ages when people were not very bright. They have been getting brighter and brighter ever since, until finally they are like they are now."

"The Franks had all been German at first, but some of them had taken to eating frogs and snails and were gradually turning into Frenchmen, a fact not generally known at the time because there were no French as yet."

"Charlemagne's strong point was morals. He was so moral that some people thought he was only fooling. These people came to no good."

"Whenever he [Charlemagne] decided to help somebody's morals, people would bury their small change and hide in the swamps and forests."

"[on the Borgias' illegitimate births] All children are natural, but some are more so than others and are therefore known as natural children."

"As for Lucrezia, there wasn't even a rumor in her own day that the strawberries at her Wednesday luncheons were dipped in sugar of lead and the other dishes tastefully sprayed with antimony, hellebore, corrosive sublimate, and deadly nightshade, all popular Renaissance flavors."

"She [Lucrezia] also had bright yellow hair, which she washed once a week with a mixture of saffron, box shavings, wood ash, barley straw, madder, cumin seed, and one thing and another to bring out the hidden glints and restore its natural color. You left it on your head for twenty-four hours and washed it off with lye made from cabbage stalks, the only hazard of which was the second-degree burn. If your hair remained on the scalp, you were a blonde."

"Philip [II of Spain] was a great believer in diplomacy, or the art of lying. He fooled some of the people some of the time."

"Other kings let their ministers make their mistakes for them, but Louis insisted on making the important mistakes personally."

"The War of the Spanish Succession lasted thirteen years and would have been wonderful if it hadn't been for the Duke of Marlborough. Things went from bad to worse until just about anybody could defeat the French. On one occasion, Louis's favorite regiment was knocked out by a man named Lumley."

"As you may be aware, Louis XIV built Versailles, a large, drafty place full of Louis Quatorze furniture and Madame de Montespan."

"Thenceforth Jeanne's deeper infatuations always seemed to concern gentlemen of a certain age and standing in the financial world. Older men say such interesting things, and Jeanne was always a good listener. Anything you said was news to her."

"After a while Louis let her [du Barry] draw her own drafts on the comptroller-general. It saved time and bother in a field he much disliked. Jeanne never took more than she needed for urgent current expenses — that is, whatever was in the treasury."

"She was one of the victims of the French Revolution, a thing thought up by some philosophers who wished to make the world a better place to live in. They wanted all the French to be free and equal and happy, and they tried to bring this about by decapitating as many of them as possible."

"Her early years were very unhappy, and she decided she would have a good time if she ever got a chance. Later on, she overdid it a little."

"As Catherine learned later that night [her wedding night], Russia makes strange bedfellows. Peter got into bed with his boots on, played with his collection of dolls for an hour or so, and told the Grand Duchess about his new mistresses. [Footnote: He had no mistresses, really, but he thought he had. It was all in his head.]"

"Catherine announced that he died of hemorrhoidal colic, and people who went to the funeral wondered why, in that case, the large bandage was tied around his neck. And that, gentle reader, is what comes from playing with dolls at the wrong time."

"In 1740 Frederick became King and wrote a book to prove that lying, cheating, and highway robbery are wrong and that true happiness comes only from helping others. He then took Silesia away from Maria Theresa of Austria, who he had promised to protect, and was called Frederick the Great."

"[Footnote] It's easy to see the faults in people, I know; and it's harder to see the good. Especially when the good isn't there."

"The more snuff Frederick took, the more memoirs he wrote. He loved literature, but not enough to let it alone and stop trying to improve it."

"The Bayeux Tapestry is accepted as an authority on many details of life and the fine points of history in the eleventh century. For instance, the horses in those days had green legs, blue bodies, yellow manes, and red heads, while the people were all double-jointed and quite different from what we generally think of as human beings."

"Henry VIII had so many wives because his dynastic sense was very strong whenever he saw a maid of honor."

"She was the most intelligent woman of her day and she refused to get married in nine languages."

"The colonists, it seems, had to "pay taxes to which their consent had never been asked." [Footnote: Today we pay taxes but our consent has been asked, and we have told the government to go ahead and tax us all they want to. We like it.]"

"He believed you could reach the East by going west. That is true enough, if you don't overdo it. You can reach Long Island City by taking the ferry for Weehawken, but nobody does it on purpose."

"On the fourth voyage, Columbus sailed along the coast of Central America trying to find the mouth of the Ganges River. It wasn't there, somehow."

"Montezuma had a weak and vacillating nature. He never knew what to do next. [Footnote: He had the courage of his convictions, but he had no convictions.]"

"The Aztecs were very sore, because Montezuma had no business giving the national treasury to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wanted it. So Montezuma appeared on the roof of the palace and told them that Mexico had definitely turned the corner and everything would be all right from then on if they would just leave it to him. And one of the Aztecs picked up a big rock and hit Montezuma on the head with it, and that was the last of Montezuma II."

"[Footnote] The Mexicans gave the Spaniards malaria, and the Spaniards gave the Mexicans smallpox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and syphilis. The Spaniards believed it was better to give than to receive."

"Tragabigzanda was a rather large girl. Later on, Captain Smith named a portion of Massachusetts after her. [Footnote: This was afterwards changed to Cape Ann, because you really can't have a part of Massachusetts named Tragabigzanda.]"

"Captain Smith reached Virginia on April 26, 1607, with a number of English gentlemen and some people who were willing to work. Then they all held a meeting to discuss ways and means of civilizing everybody. They made a great many speeches and accused each other of various crimes and misdemeanors and arrested some of themselves as an object lesson, and American history was started at last."

"[Footnote] Great men seem to have only one purpose in life — getting into history. That may be all they are good for."

"They [the Pilgrim Fathers] believed in freedom of thought for themselves and for all other people who believed exactly as they did."

"If the Pilgrims were looking for freedom of conscience, they came to just the right place. In America, everybody's conscience is unusually free."

"The moral of the story of the Pilgrims is that if you work hard all your life and behave yourself every minute and take no time out for fun you will break practically even, if you can borrow enough money to pay your taxes."

"Armadillos make affectionate pets, if you need affection that much."

"Sartor Resartus is simply unreadable, and for me that always sort of spoils a book."

"If I were king of radio, mighty monarch of the air lanes, I would make Will Cuppy the master of ceremonies on all programs, because he has the nonchalance and grace of the genuine man-about-town. His quips are as fresh as traffic cops and his delivery leaves this corner as happy as a comedian who has just found a sponsor."

"He had the haunted look of the true humorist."

"His style of humor is unique and, like the taste of an avocado, a little hard to describe."

"He was probably the most diligent fact excavator since Gibbon; what he didn't know about a subject, once he had decided to spoof it, wasn't worth knowing."

"Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died."

"Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to detain them at the bottom."

"I hate being moved. I hate that man who came in. So self-righteous, so cruel. He made fun of me, that's why I cried. You never did that. You led me into temptation by your — politeness."

"Irrespective of nationality, soldiers are always open to the same discomfort and to the same comradeship the world over. I'll make things easy for you if you make things easy for me. That is, after all the unwritten law of the barracks."

"If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue."

"To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness."

"By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door."

"I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer."

"Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth."

"Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious."

"In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from."

"Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus."

"Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares."

"The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us."

"There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners."

"It is unfortunate for all that no moral issue has ever been clearer. Any attempt to plea-bargain with outlaws and renegades will only be at the expense of honor, decency and self-respect. The Serbs, are two-dimensional people with a craving for simplicity and an ideology so basic it can be understood without effort. They need enemies, not friends, to focus their two-dimensional ideas. Life for them is a simple tune, never an orchestration, or even a pleasant harmony. Animals make use of their resources with far greater felicity than these retorted creatures, whose subscription to the human race is well in arrears."

"Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique."

"Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them."

"Sex is a conversation carried out by other means."

"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich."

"I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins."

"The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill."

"Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy."

"Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of."

"The only one who's always punctual is Death … whatever the time he always strikes his knell at the first streak of dawn … and believe me, he knows what he's doing. How I hate the dawn! It's the hour of the firing squad. The last glass of brandy. The ultimate cigarette. The final wish. All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses … fix your bayonets boys …gentlemen, synchronize your watches … in ten seconds time the barrage starts … a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years... And finally dawn is the herald of the day, our twelve hours of unimportance, when we have to cede to the pressures of the powers, smile at people we have every reason but expediency to detest … A diplomat these days is nothing but a head-waiter who's allowed to sit down occasionally."

"I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. … It's the party at present in power."

"2nd Soldier: Do you mean that, as a General, you're not the tiniest bit ambitious for our military future? General: I prefer our military past. The harm's done and there it is. As for being a General, well, at the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords, we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it."

"Good-bye to you too ol' Rights of Man!"

"It's hot. And there's a lot of it. I like everything about it except the flavor."

"Flogging. The only solution to every problem. I warrant even the culprit himself doesn't know! It was just — his turn!"

"It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man."

"The sea is calm you said. Peaceful. Calm above, but below a world of gliding monsters preying on their fellows. Murderers, all of them. Only the strongest teeth survive. And who's to tell me it's any different here on board, or yonder on dry land."

"You know Seymour, there are some men who cannot stand too much perfection. They see it as a disease, which must be stamped out at its first rash showing."

"Lieutenant Seymour: Wyatt, we do not deal with justice here, but with the law. Lieutenant Wyatt: Was not the one conceived to serve the other?"

"I'd rather be buried at sea than on the shore when I come to die. Will you stand by the plank, mates, so I can shake a friendly hand before I sink?"

"Claggert: We must serve the law, sir, or give up the right and privilege of service. It is only within that law that we may use our discretions according to our rank. Captain Vere: You're so intelligent and so lucid for the rank you hold, Master At Arms. Claggert: I thank you, sir. Captain Vere: Yes, that's no flattery, Mr. Claggart. It's a melancholy fact. It's sad to see such qualities of mind bent to such a sorry purpose. What's the reason for it? Claggert: I am what I am, sir. And what the world has made me. Captain Vere: The world? The world demands that behind every peacemaker there be the gun, the gallows, the jail. Do you think it will always be so? Claggert: I have no reason not to, sir. Captain Vere: You live without hope? Claggert: I live. Captain Vere: But remember, Mr. Claggart, that even the man who wields the whip cannot defy the code we must obey and not be broken by it. That will be all."

"Billy Budd: You didn't even hate him. I think that sometimes you hate yourself. I was thinking, sir, the nights are lonely. Perhaps I could talk with you between watches when you've nothing else to do. Claggert: Lonely. What do you know of loneliness? Billy Budd: Them's alone that want to be. Claggert: Nights are long. Conversation helps pass the time. Billy Budd: Can I talk to you again, then? It would mean a lot to me. Claggert: Perhaps to me, too. [His expression suddenly sours] Oh, no. You would charm me too, huh? Get away."

"I am just a man, not fit to do the work of God... or the Devil."

"To all those who by accident or design, have not been included in this book."

"I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilized music in the world."

"Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first."

"Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our one duty is to furnish it well."

"Life was cheap in the Middle Ages. It has become cheaper since. It is only in specific battles for specific lives that our culture is put to the test, and with it our humanity."

"I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day."

"We have fought two wars to end war. In 1976, the nations of this world set aside the same amount of money for its starving children as the lavished on armaments every two hours. Can any right-minded man afford to be a pessimist? That was a luxury for easier days."

"The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation."

"Basically I'm a very serious person, but I think the form it takes with me is comedy. I see the amusing side of all potentially pompous situations."

"Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much."

"I have four children which is not bad considering I'm not a Catholic."

"It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously."

"To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal."

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."

"If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done."

"Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find."

"The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come."

"He had a great sense of the good in people. He enjoyed the peculiarities that were part of humanity. … Filming can be desperately boring and he was always telling fantastic stories and being tremendously entertaining."

"He was a superb raconteur — never vicious, never cruel."

"Sir Peter had a magical way with children and an inimitable way of making their problems matter to people all over the world. He was one of UNICEF’s most effective and beloved partners, a man who exemplified the idea that one person can make a world of difference. … There are few parts of the globe where Sir Peter did not travel to meet with and advocate for children, and few communities that were not made better by his attention."

"I was walking barefoot on St. Paul's bridge When I saw a man talking to God He was round and handsome Anachronistically A little odd I overheard his conversation He said, "I can't live in a world devoid of love." And the voice, the voice was so familiar It was the voice of Peter Ustinov "Peter," I whispered from the shadows "We've all been damaged by the 20th century A man like you can talk to God But can you spare a word for me? For I have loved you since the time I saw you in The Mouse that Roared." "That was Peter Sellers, my dear. Go away," he implored."

"Then he lifted his body up To throw himself to a watery grave "Peter," I yelled "What about Billy Budd The innocent no one could save?""

"It was as if all the world's wit were rolled into one portly fellow. … He spoke six languages, and a few others of his own comic invention. With gifts too wide-ranging to be contained in one art form, he wrote hit plays (Romanoff and Juliet) and books of nonfiction and short stories. … His spirit was essentially impish (as on a comedy album for which he provided all the voices and sound effects); his greatest role was Peter Ustinov, inexhaustible raconteur. The title of his 1977 autobiography summed up the world's opinion of this engaging, capacious talent: Dear Me."

"Sunshine Sally and Peter Ustinov don't like the scene anyhow. I dropped acid on a Saturday night just to see what the fuss was about."

"He was a man for all seasons, perhaps the true renaissance man."

"I quite like talking myself, but when Peter was in the room there wasn't much point, you just had to listen. He was unimaginably, overwhelmingly gifted. You had to imagine a cross between Dr Johnson, Isaiah Berlin, Peter Sellers and don't forget Charlie Chaplin — because Peter was a great mime too. … He was inexhaustible. It was like talking to Europe, talking to history."

"I think he'd just get bored doing one thing. He would go from one thing to another I think because to him it was all one. That's what I loved about him. He was a very lovable man. I hardly knew him, I only met him two or three times, but each time was ingrained in my memory like being like some superb intellectual circus."

"The day had to come when he'd be gone. Thank God it was a long time coming. But he's a big thing to do without."

"He would always see the bright side of something, even something that would be very annoying to him or to all of us around him. He would get over it and he would always find that there was something positive to be gained from it. He was a giver, throughout everything, and a wonderful warm person."

"Jack of all trades, master of none — but what a jack! … In the end he was a disappointed man … He wanted to be a great playwright or a great author. He never quite made that."

"He was one of the great story tellers of modern times. The biggest shame is that we have so few people left these days who really tell stories."

"Peter's most outstanding achievement was to be Peter Ustinov … and he was an all-round wonderful person. I'm very glad to have known him, I shall miss him greatly."

"Routine is the death to heroism."

"It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them."

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.' (quoting John Greenleaf Whittier)"

""Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary," murmured Psmith. (Earlier usage of the precise words "Elementary, my dear Watson" has been found in the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.)"

"Work, the what's-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what d'you-call-it."

"So was victory turned into defeat, and Billy's jaw became squarer and his eye more full of the light of battle than ever."

"His was a life which lacked, perhaps, the sublimer emotions which raised Man to the level of the gods, but it was undeniably an extremely happy one. He never experienced the thrill of ambition fulfilled, but, on the other hand, he never knew the agony of ambition frustrated. His name, when he died, would not live for ever in England's annals; he was spared the pain of worrying about this by the fact that he had no desire to live for ever in England's annals. He was possibly as nearly contented a human being can be in this century of alarms and excursions."

"The village of Market Blandings is one of those sleepy hamlets which modern progress has failed to touch... The church is Norman, and the intelligence of the majority of the natives palaeozoic."

"In English country towns, if the public houses do not actually outnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It is only when they are two to one that hard times hit them and set the innkeepers to blaming the government."

"At five minutes to eleven on the morning named he was at the station, a false beard and spectacles shielding his identity from the public eye. If you had asked him he would have said that he was a Scotch business man. As a matter of fact, he looked far more like a motor-car coming through a haystack."

"‘As a sleuth you are poor. You couldn’t detect a bass-drum in a telephone-booth.’"

"Henry glanced hastily at the mirror. Yes, he did look rather old. He must have overdone some of the lines on his forehead. He looked something between a youngish centenarian and a nonagenarian who had seen a good deal of trouble."

"There are some things a chappie's mind absolutely refuses to picture, and Aunt Julia singing 'Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay' is one of them."

"He wore the unmistakable look of a man about to be present at a row between women, and only a wet cat in a strange backyard bears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced by such a prospect."

"And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need."

"The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun."

"A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour."

"At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies."

"Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious."

"Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good."

"He trusted neither of them as far as he could spit, and he was a poor spitter, lacking both distance and control."

"It was one of those cold, clammy, accusing sort of eyes--the kind that makes you reach up to see if your tie is straight: and he looked at me as I were some sort of unnecessary product which Cuthbert the Cat had brought in after a ramble among the local ash-cans."

"It was a cold, disapproving gaze, such as a fastidious luncher who was not fond of caterpillars might have directed at one which he had discovered in his portion of salad..."

"Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He looked like a man who would write vers libre, as indeed he did."

"Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there are higher, nobler things than love."

"He was not a man who prattled readily, especially in a foreign tongue. He gave the impression that each word was excavated from his interior by some up-to-date process of mining."

"... "someone tried to assasinate Lenin with a revolver. That is our (Russia's) great national sport, you see.""

"... Vladimir Brusiloff proceeded to sum up. "No novelists any good except me. Sovietski--yah! Nastikoff--bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me.""

"What I want to know is what a fellow does when he plays golf. Tell me in as few words as you can just what it's all about." --"You hit a ball with a stick until it falls into a hole."

"[Millionaire-financier Vincent Jopp said:] "Go out and buy me a set of clubs, a red jacket, a cloth cap, a pair of spiked shoes, and a ball." --"One ball?" "Certainly. What need is there of more?" --"It sometimes happens," I explained, "that a player who is learning the game fails to hit the ball straight, and then he often loses it in the rough at the side of the fairway." "Absurd!" said Vincent Jopp. "If I set out to drive my ball straight, I shall drive it straight.""

"When I was but a babe, my eldest sister was bribed with sixpence an hour by my nurse to keep an eye on me and see that I did not raise Cain. At the end of the first day she struck for a shilling, and got it."

"I like to be surrounded by joy and life, and I know nothing more joyless and deader than a dead fish. Multiply that dead fish by a million, and you have an environment which only a Dante could contemplate with equanimity."

"“...These trousers may sit well, but, if they do, it is because the pockets are empty.”"

"As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ('Please read this carefully and send it on Jane') the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that."

"It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought."

"I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back."

"Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad."

"I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast."

"Anybody can talk me round. If I were in a Trappist monastery, the first thing that would happen would be that some smooth performer would lure me into some frightful idiocy against my better judgment by means of the deaf-and-dumb language."

"‘Alf Todd,’ said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of imagery, ‘has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark room trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild-cat’s ear with a red-hot needle.’"

"Whenever I meet Ukridge’s Aunt Julia I have the same curious illusion of having just committed some particularly unsavoury crime and—what is more—of having done it with swollen hands, enlarged feet, and trousers bagging at the knee on a morning when I had omitted to shave."

"He resembled a minor prophet who had been hit behind the ear with a stuffed eel-skin."

"He committed mayhem upon his person. He did everything to him that a man can do who is hampered with boxing gloves."

"The principle on which chairmen at these meetings are selected is perhaps too familiar to require recording here at length, but in case some of my readers are not acquainted with the workings of political machines, I may say that no one under the age of eighty-five is eligible and the preference is given to those with adenoids. For Boko Lawlor the authorities had extended themselves and picked a champion of his class. In addition to adenoids, the Right Hon. the Marquess of Cricklewood had — or seemed to have — a potato of the maximum size and hotness in his mouth, and he had learned his elocution in one of those correspondence schools which teach it by mail. I caught his first sentence — that he would only detain us a moment — but for fifteen minutes after that he baffled me completely. That he was still speaking I could tell by the way his Adam’s apple wiggled, but what he was saying I could not even guess."

"'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend."

"Honoria, you see, is one of those robust, dynamic girls with the muscles of a welterweight and a laugh like a squadron of cavalry charging over a tin bridge. A beastly thing to face over the breakfast table. Brainy, moreover."

"The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn't seemed quite so bad from there."

"Dedication: To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time."

"While they were content to peck cautiously at the ball, he never spared himself in his efforts to do it a violent injury."

"Blizzard was of the fine old school of butlers. His appearance suggested that for fifteen years he had not let a day pass without its pint of port. He radiated port and pop-eyed dignity. He had splay feet and three chins, and when he walked his curving waistcoat preceded him like the advance guard of some royal procession."

"Bradbury Fisher shuddered from head to foot, and his legs wobbled like asparagus stalks."

"[of a character in "The Man Who Gave Up Smoking" who is suffering from a hangover] ... the noise of the cat stamping about in the passage outside caused him exquisite discomfort."

"A certain critic—for such men, I regret to say, do exist—made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained ‘all the old Wodehouse characters under different names’. He has probably now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled this man by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy. (From preface)"

"At this moment, the laurel bush, which had hitherto not spoken, said "Psst!""

"This done, he felt a little—not much, but a little—better. Before, he would have gladly murdered Beach and James and danced on their graves. Now, he would have been satisfied with straight murder."

"When you have just been told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon."

"The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say `When!'"

"My Aunt Dahlia has a carrying voice... If all other sources of income failed, she could make a good living calling the cattle home across the Sands of Dee."

"She fitted into my biggest armchair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight about the hips that season."

"Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove."

"In one second, without any previous training or upbringing, he had become the wettest man in Worcestershire."

"'The modern young man,' said Aunt Dahlia, 'is a congenital idiot and wants a nurse to lead him by the hand and some strong attendant to kick him regularly at intervals of a quarter of an hour.'"

"One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-nurtured a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crêpe and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is."

"I can't stand Paris. I hate the place. Full of people talking French, which is a thing I bar. It always seems to me so affected."

"He groaned slightly and winced, like Prometheus watching his vulture dropping in for lunch."

"The real objection to the great majority of cats is their insufferable air of superiority. Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods. This makes them too prone to set themselves up as critics and censors of the frail and erring human beings whose lot they share."

"Oh, yes, he thinks a lot of you. I remember his very words. 'Mr Wooster, miss,' he said, 'is, perhaps, mentally somewhat negligible but he has a heart of gold.'"

"You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing right out of you. I mean to say, there is something about their personality that paralyses the vocal cords and reduces the contents of the brain to cauliflower."

"Scarcely had I entered the sitting-room when I found ... what appeared at first sight to be the Devil, A closer scrutiny informed me that it was Gussie Fink-Nottle, dressed as Mephistopheles."

"We do not tell old friends beneath our roof-tree that they are an offence to the eyesight."

"Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror."

"The female in question was a sloppy pest"

"There is enough sadness in life without having fellows like Gussie Fink-Nottle going about in sea boots."

"A slight throbbing about the temples told me that this discussion had reached saturation point."

"I consider that of all the dashed silly, drivelling ideas I ever heard in my puff this is the most blithering and futile. It won't work. Not a chance."

"And a moment later there was a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and the relative had crossed the threshold at fifty m.p.h. under her own steam."

"My Aunt Agatha, the curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all."

"She cried in a voice that hit me between the eyebrows and went out at the back of my head."

"I goggled. Her words did not appear to make sense. They seemed the mere aimless vapouring of an aunt who has been sitting out in the sun without a hat."

"He had been looking like a dead fish. He now looked like a deader fish, one of last year's, cast up on some lonely beach and left there at the mercy of the wind and tides."

"It's only about once in a lifetime that anything sensational ever happens to one, and when it does, you don't want people taking all the colour out of it. I remember at school having to read that stuff where that chap, Othello, tells the girl what a hell of a time he'd been having among the cannibals and what not. Well, imagine his feelings if, after he had described some particularly sticky passage with a cannibal chief and was waiting for the awestruck "Oh-h! Not really?", she had said that the whole thing had no doubt been greatly exaggerated and that the man had probably really been a prominent local vegetarian."

"And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I shall carry on as planned."

"In build and appearance, Tuppy somewhat resembles a bulldog, and his aspect now was that of one of these fine animals who has just been refused a slice of cake."

"The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the old merry Bertram."

"I don't want to seem always to be criticizing your methods of voice production, Jeeves," I said, "but I must inform you that that 'Well, sir' of yours is in many respects fully as unpleasant as your 'Indeed, sir?' Like the latter, it seems to be tinged with a definite scepticism. It suggests a lack of faith in my vision. The impression I retain after hearing you shoot it at me a couple of times is that you consider me to be talking through the back of my neck, and that only a feudal sense of what is fitting restrains you from substituting for it the words 'Says you!'"

"And as for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming him on sight."

"He uttered a coarse expression which I wouldn't have thought he would have known. It just shows that you can bury yourself in the country and still somehow acquire a vocabulary. No doubt one picks up things from the neighbours — the vicar, the local doctor, the man who brings the milk, and so on."

"I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow named Pig-something — a sculptor he would have been, no doubt — who made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing suddenly came to life. A pretty nasty shock for the chap, of course."

""Oh, look," she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provençal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit."

"When I was a child, I used to think that rabbits were gnomes, and that if I held my breath and stayed quite still, I should see the fairy queen." Indicating with a reserved gesture that this was just the sort of loony thing I should have expected her to think as a child, I returned to the point."

"Though never for an instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature's final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him well."

"Then he rose and began to pace the room in an overwrought sort of way, like a zoo lion who has heard the dinner-gong go and is hoping the keeper won't forget him in the general distribution."

"Contenting myself, accordingly, with a gesture of loving sympathy, I left the room. Whether she did or did not throw a handsomely bound volume of the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, at me, I am not in a position to say. I had seen it lying on the table beside her, and as I closed the door I remember receiving the impression that some blunt instrument had crashed against the woodwork, but I was feeling too pre-occupied to note and observe."

"Jeeves," I said, and I am free to admit that in my emotion I bleated like a lamb drawing itself to the attention of the parent sheep, "what the dickens is all this?"

"I wouldn't have said off-hand that I had a subconscious mind, but I suppose I must without knowing it, and no doubt it was there, sweating away diligently at the old stand, all the while the corporeal Wooster was getting his eight hours."

"If you can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he now stood before me."

"Beginning with a critique of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum."

"Besides, isn't there something in the book of rules about a man may not marry his cousin? Or am I thinking of grandmothers?"

"I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb."

"He expressed the opinion that the world was in a deplorable state. I said, 'Don't talk rot, old Tom Travers.' 'I am not accustomed to talk rot,' he said. 'Then, for a beginner,' I said, 'you do it dashed well.' And I think you will admit, boys and ladies and gentlemen, that that was telling him.""

"[Anatole, the French chef, is angry.] He spoke, in part, as follows: "Hot dog! You ask me what is it? Listen. Make some attention a little. Me, I have hit the hay, but I do not sleep so good, and presently I wake and up I look, and there is one who make faces against me through the dashed window. Is that a pretty affair? Is that convenient? If you think I like it, you jolly well mistake yourself. I am so mad as a wet hen. And why not? I am somebody, isn't it? This is a bedroom, what-what, not a house for some apes? Then for what do blighters sit on my window so cool as a few cucumbers, making some faces?" "Quite," I said. Dashed reasonable, was my verdict. He threw another look up at Gussie, and did Exercise 2—the one where you clutch the moustache, give it a tug and then start catching flies. "Wait yet a little. I am not finish. I say I see this type on my window, making a few faces. But what then? Does he buzz off when I shout a cry, and leave me peaceable? Not on your life. He remain planted there, not giving any damns, and sit regarding me like a cat watching a duck. He make faces against me and again he make faces against me, and the more I command that he should get to hell out of here, the more he do not get to hell out of here. He cry something towards me, and I demand what is his desire, but he do not explain. Oh, no, that arrives never. He does but shrug his head. What damn silliness! Is this amusing for me? You think I like it? I am not content with such folly. I think the poor mutt's loony. Je me fiche de ce type infect. C'est idiot de faire comme ça l'oiseau.... Allez-vous-en, louffier.... Tell the boob to go away. He is mad as some March hatters." I must say I thought he was making out a jolly good case, and evidently Aunt Dahlia felt the same. She laid a quivering hand on his shoulder. "I will, Monsieur Anatole, I will," she said, and I couldn't have believed that robust voice capable of sinking to such an absolute coo. More like a turtle dove calling to its mate than anything else. "It's quite all right." She had said the wrong thing. He did Exercise 3. "All right? Nom d'un nom d'un nom! The hell you say it's all right! Of what use to pull stuff like that? Wait one half-moment. Not yet quite so quick, my old sport. It is by no means all right. See yet again a little. It is some very different dishes of fish. I can take a few smooths with a rough, it is true, but I do not find it agreeable when one play larks against me on my windows. That cannot do. A nice thing, no. I am a serious man. I do not wish a few larks on my windows. I enjoy larks on my windows worse as any. It is very little all right. If such rannygazoo is to arrive, I do not remain any longer in this house no more. I buzz off and do not stay planted.""

"The fellow with a face rather like a walnut."

"Nature, when planning this sterling fellow, shoved in a lot more lower jaw than was absolutely necessary and made the eyes a bit too keen and piercing for one who was neither an Empire builder nor a traffic policeman."

"She loves this newt-nuzzling blister."

""I hadn't heard the door open, but the man was on the spot once more. My private belief, as I think I have mentioned before, is that Jeeves doesn't have to open doors. He's like one of those birds in India who bung their astral bodies about — the chaps, I mean, who having gone into thin air in Bombay, reassemble the parts and appear two minutes later in Calcutta. Only some such theory will account for the fact that he's not there one moment and is there the next. He just seems to float from Spot A to Spot B like some form of gas."

"It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia, lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them."

"Even at normal times Aunt Dahlia's map tended a little towards the crushed strawberry. But never had I seen it take on so pronounced a richness as now. She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression."

"If the prophet Job were to walk into the room at this moment, I could sit swapping hard-luck stories with him till bedtime.""

"I charged into something which might have been a tree, but was not — being, in point of fact, Jeeves."

"There is about him something that seems to soothe and hypnotize. To the best of my knowledge, he has never encountered a charging rhinoceros, but should this contingency occur, I have no doubt that the animal, meeting his eye, would check itself in mid-stride, roll over and lie purring with its legs in the air."

"It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine."

"A sort of gulpy, gurgly, plobby, squishy, wofflesome sound, like a thousand eager men drinking soup in a foreign restaurant."

"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. One of the things which Gertrude Butterwick had impressed on Monty Bodkin when he left for his holiday on the Riviera was that he must be sure to practise his French, and Gertrude’s word was law. So now, though he knew that it was going to make his nose tickle, he said: ‘Er, garçon.’ ‘M’sieur?’ ‘Er, garçon, esker-vous avez un spot de l’encre et une piece de papier—note papier, vous savez—et une envelope et une plume.’ The strain was too great. Monty relapsed into his native tongue. ‘I want to write a letter,’ he said. And having, like all lovers, rather a tendency to share his romance with the world, he would probably have added ‘to the sweetest girl on earth’, had not the waiter already bounded off like a retriever, to return a few moments later with the fixings. ‘V’la, sir! Zere you are, sir,’ said the waiter. He was engaged to a girl in Paris who had told him that when on the Riviera he must be sure to practise his English. ‘Eenk—pin—pipper—enveloppe—and a liddle bit of bloddin-pipper.’ ‘Oh, merci,’ said Monty, well pleased at this efficiency. ‘Thanks. Right-ho.’ ‘Right-ho, m’sieur,’ said the waiter."

"He had never acted in his life, and couldn't play the pin in Pinafore."

"A young man with dark circles under his eyes was propping himself up against a penny-in-the-slot machine. An undertaker, passing at that moment, would have looked at this young man sharply, scenting business. So would a buzzard."

"'Didn't Frankenstein get married?' 'Did he?' said Eggy. 'I don't know. I never met him. Harrow man, I expect.'"

"If Eggy wanted to get spliced, let him, was the way I looked at it. Marriage might improve him. It was difficult to think of anything that wouldn’t."

"I shuddered from stem to stern, as stout barks do when buffeted by the waves."

"It was a harsh, rasping voice, in its timbre not unlike a sawmill."

"‘Do you know,’ said a thoughtful Bean, ‘I’ll bet that if all the girls Freddie Widgeon has loved were placed end to end—not that I suppose one could do it—they would reach half-way down Piccadilly.’ ‘Further than that,’ said the Egg. ‘Some of them were pretty tall.’"

"’You must remember, Father,’ said Mavis, in a voice which would have had an Eskimo slapping his ribs and calling for the steam-heat, ‘that this girl was probably very pretty. So many of these New York girls are. That would, of course, explain Frederick's behaviour.’"

"He then gave a hideous laugh and added that, if anybody was interested in his plans, he was going to join the Foreign Legion, that cohort of the damned in which broken men may toil and die and dying, forget. ‘Beau Widgeon?’ said the Egg, impressed. ‘What ho!’"

"‘Oh Brancepeth,’ said the girl, her voice trembling, ‘why haven’t you any money? If only you had the merest pittance - enough for a flat in Mayfair and a little weekend place in the country somewhere and a couple of good cars and a villa in the South of France and a bit of trout fishing on some decent river, I would risk all for love.’"

"I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."

"Aunt Agatha, who eats broken bottles and wears barbed wire next to the skin."

"[of Spode] He was, as I had already been able to perceive, a breath-taking cove. About seven feet in height, and swathed in a plaid ulster which made him look about six feet across, he caught the eye and arrested it. It was as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla and had changed its mind at the last moment."

"It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof."

"'Have you ever seen Spode eat asparagus?' 'No.' 'Revolting. It alters one's whole conception of Man as Nature's last word.'"

"Prismatic is the only word for those frightful tweeds and, oddly enough, the spectacle of them had the effect of steadying my nerves. They gave me the feeling that nothing mattered."

"The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: ‘Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?"

"'There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, "Do trousers matter?"' ‘The mood will pass, sir.’"

"Stiffy was one of those girls who enjoy in equal quantities the gall of an army mule and the calm insouciance of a fish on a slab of ice."

"There came from without the hoof-beats of a galloping relative and Aunt Dahlia whizzed in."

"'You can't be a successful Dictator and design women's underclothing.' 'No, sir.' 'One or the other. Not both.' 'Precisely, sir.'"

"’You know your Shelley, Bertie!’ ‘Oh, am I?’"

"I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but a thing I have found in life is that from time to time, as you jog along, there occur moments which you are able to recognize immediately with the naked eye as high spots. Something tells you that they are going to remain etched, if etched is the word I want, for ever on the memory and will come back to you at intervals down the years, as you are dropping off to sleep, banishing that drowsy feeling and causing you to leap on the pillow like a gaffed salmon."

"'I want to know what the devil you mean by keeping coming into my private apartment, taking up space which I require for other purposes and interrupting me when I am chatting with my personal friends. Really one gets about as much privacy in this house as a strip-tease dancer.'"

"...his head emerged cautiously, like that of a snail taking a look around after a thunderstorm."

"I don’t suppose she would recognize a deep, beautiful thought if you handed it to her on a skewer with tartare sauce."

"She snorted with a sudden violence which twenty-four hours earlier would have unmanned me completely. Even in my present tolerably robust condition, it affected me like one of those gas explosions which slay six."

"Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag."

"Directing an austere look at Tubby’s receding back, she spoke in a cold crisp voice which sounded in the drowsy stillness like ice tinkling in a pitcher."

"Whatever may be said in favour of the Victorians, it is pretty generally admitted that few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks."

"there entered a young man of great height but lacking the width of shoulder and ruggedness of limb which make height impressive. Nature, stretching Horace Davenport out, had forgotten to stretch him sideways, and one could have pictured Euclid, had they met, nudging a friend and saying:‘Don't look now, but this chap coming along illustrates exactly what I was telling you about a straight line having length without breadth"

"'Don't blame me, Pongo,' said Lord Ickenham, 'if Lady Constance takes her lorgnette to you. God bless my soul, though, you can't compare the lorgnettes of to-day with the ones I used to know as a boy. I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped her lorgnette from its holster and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, as if he had seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business. And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start.'"

"It began to be borne in upon Lord Ickenham that in planning to appeal to the Duke’s better feelings he had omitted to take into his calculations the fact that he might not have any."

"The cosy glow which had been enveloping the Duke became shot through by a sudden chill. It was as if he had been luxuriating in a warm shower-bath, and some hidden hand had turned on the cold tap."

"The Duke’s moustache was rising and falling like seaweed on an ebb-tide."

"He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg."

"Bingo swayed like a jelly in a high wind."

"His whole aspect was that of a man who has unexpectedly been struck by lightning."

"Mere abuse is no criticism."

"[Hemmingway] seemed disposed to conversation. "A lot of wasps there are about this summer," he said. "One sang right past my ear just then." --"I wish it had bitten you," said Poskitt. "Wasps," replied Hemmingway, who had dabbled in natural history, "do not bite. They sting. You are thinking of snakes." --"Your society would make anyone think of snakes." "Gentlemen," I said. "Gentlemen!""

"Aunt Agatha is like an elephant—not so much to look at, for in appearance she resembles more a well-bred vulture, but because she never forgets."

"His eyes were rolling in their sockets, and his face had taken on the colour and expression of a devout tomato. I could see he loved like a thousand bricks."

"I suppose this was really the moment for embarking upon an impassioned defence of Boko, stressing his admirable qualities. Not being able to think of any, however, I remained silent."

"On his good mornings, I don't suppose there are more than a handful of men in the W. 1 postal district of London swifter to spot oompus-boompus than Bertram Wooster, and this was one of my particularly good mornings. I saw the whole hideous plot."

"I don’t say I’ve got much of a soul, but, such as it is, I’m perfectly satisfied with the little chap. I don’t want people fooling about with it. ‘Leave it alone,’ I say. ‘Don’t touch it. I like it the way it is.’"

"He vanished abruptly, like an eel going into mud."

"However devoutly a girl may worship the man of her choice, there always comes a time when she feels an irresistible urge to haul off and let him have it in the neck."

"She laughed - a solo effort. Nothing in the prevailing circumstances made me feel like turning it into a duet."

"There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action."

"We exchanged a meaning glance. Or, rather, two meaning glances, I giving him one and he giving me the other."

"When news had reached me through well-informed channels that my Aunt Agatha for many years a widow, or derelict, as I believed it is called, was about to take another pop at matrimony, my first emotion, as was natural in the circumstances, had been a gentle pity for the unfortunate goop slated to step up the aisle with her - she, as you are aware, being my tough aunt, the one who eats broken bottles and conducts human sacrifices by the light of the full moon."

"Breakfast had been prepared by the kitchen maid, an indifferent performer who had used the scorched earth policy on the bacon again."

"It seemed to me, thinking quick, that the only way of solving the am-parce [impasse] was to sacrifice Shorty. Like Russian peasants with their children, you know, when they are pursued by wolves and it becomes imperative to lighten the sledge."

"The stationmaster’s whiskers are of a Victorian bushiness and give the impression of having been grown under glass."

"On the cue 'five aunts' I had given at the knees a trifle, for the thought of being confronted with such a solid gaggle of aunts, even if those of another, was an unnerving one. Reminding myself that in this life it is not aunts that matter, but the courage that one brings to them, I pulled myself together."

"As far as the eye could reach, I found myself gazing on a surging sea of aunts. There were tall aunts, short aunts, stout aunts, thin aunts, and an aunt who was carrying on a conversation in a low voice to which nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention."

"For an author Jerry Vail was rather nice-looking, most authors, as is widely known, resembling in appearance the more degraded types of fish, unless they look like birds, when they could pass as vultures and no questions asked."

"The junior partner of Caine and Cooper, though a man of blameless life, had one of those dark, saturnine faces which suggest a taste for the more sinister forms of crime, and on one cheek of that dark, saturnine face was a long scar. Actually it had been caused by the bursting of a gingerbeer bottle at a Y.M.C.A. picnic, but it gave the impression of being the outcome of battles with knives in the cellars of the underworld."

"Ice formed on the butler's upper slopes."

"For some moments after silence had come like a poultice to heal the blows of sound, all that occupied his mind was the thought of what pests the gentler sex were when they got hold of a telephone. The instrument seemed to go to their heads like a drug. Connie Keeble, for instance. Nice sensible woman when you talked to her face to face, never tried to collar the conversation and all that, but the moment she got on the telephone, it was gab, gab, gab, and all about nothing."

"It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't."

"I agreed the situation was sticky. Indeed, offhand it was difficult to see how it could have been more glutinous."

"As plainly as if it had been the top line on the oculist’s chart I could see what the future held for Bertram."

"Before my eyes he wilted like a wet sock."

"And as he, too, seemed disinclined for chit-chat, we stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist monks who have run into each other at the dog races."

"Oh, Bertie, if I ever called you a brainless poop who ought to be given a scholarship at some lunatic asylum, I take back the words."

"I don't know if you have ever seen a tiger of the jungle drawing a deep breath preparatory to doing a swan dive and landing with both the feet on the backbone of one of the minor fauna. Probably not, nor, as a matter of fact, have I."

"Nannie Bruce, a tall, gangling light-heavyweight with a suggestion in her appearance of a private in the Grenadiers dressed up to play the title role in Charley’s Aunt, was one of those doggedly faithful retainers who adhere to almost all old families like barnacles to the hulls of ships...She was as much a fixture as the stone lions or the funny smell in the attic."

"He had that self-reproachful feeling of having been remiss which comes to Generals who wake up one morning to discover that they have carelessly allowed themselves to be outflanked."

"Never put anything on paper, my boy, and never trust a man with a small black moustache."

"It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo."

"Attila the Hun might have broken off his engagement to her, but nobody except Attila the Hun, and he only on one of his best mornings."

"Oofy, thinking of the tenner he had given Freddie, writhed like an electric fan."

"...I mean to say, when a girl, offered a good man’s heart, laughs like a bursting paper bag and tells him not to be a silly ass, the good man is entitled, I think, to assume that the whole thing is off."

"Whenever there is a job to be taken on of a kind calculated to make Humanity shudder, the cry goes up, ‘Let Wooster do it.’"

"‘Are you sure?’ I said that sure was just what I wasn’t anything but."

"She’s all for not letting the sun go down without having started something calculated to stagger humanity."

"‘Suppose your Aunt Dahlia read in the paper one morning that you were going to be shot at sunrise.’ ‘I couldn’t be, I’m never up so early.’"

"‘When I say “mind,”’ said the blood relation, ‘I refer to the quarter-teaspoonful of brain which you might possibly find in her head if you sank an artesian well.’"

"I started violently, as if some unseen hand had goosed me."

"I’d always thought her half-baked, but now I think they didn’t even put her in the oven."

""Wellbeloved," she said, ... "I have been making inquiries about you in Market Blandings, and everyone to whom I have mentioned your name tells me that you are thoroughly untrustworthy, a man without scruples of any sort, who sticks at nothing and will do anything for money. ... At the Emsworth Arms, for instance, I was informed that you would sell your grandmother for twopence." George Cyril said that he did not have a grandmother, and seemed a good deal outraged by the suggestion that, if that relative had not long since gone to reside with the morning stars, he would have parted with her at such bargain-basement rates. A good grandmother should fetch at least a couple of bob."

"‘Don't you like this hat?‘ ‘No, sir.‘ ‘Well, I do,‘ I replied rather cleverly, and went out with it tilted just that merest shade over the left eye which makes all the difference."

"He’s engaged to be married to Stiffy Byng, and his long years of football should prove an excellent preparation for setting up house with her. The way I look at it is that when a fellow has had plug-uglies in cleated boots doing a Shuffle-off-to-Buffalo on his face Saturday after Saturday since he was a slip of a boy, he must get to fear nothing, not even marriage with a girl like Stiffy, who from early childhood has seldom let the sun go down without starting some loony enterprise calculated to bleach the hair of one and all."

"‘Stinko, is he?’ 'Not perhaps stinko, but certainly effervescent.’"

"'I hate you, I hate you!' cried Madeline, a thing I didn't know anyone ever said except in the second act of a musical comedy."

"...as I felt my way along the wall I collided with what turned out to be a grandfather clock, for the existence of which I had not budgeted, and it toppled over with a sound like the delivery of several tons of coal through the roof of a conservatory. Glass crashed, pulleys and things parted from their moorings, and as I stood trying to separate my heart from the front teeth in which it had become entangled, the lights flashed on and I beheld Sir Watkyn Bassett."

"I was expecting Pop Bassett to give an impersonation of a bomb falling on an ammunition dump, but he didn’t. Instead, he continued to exhibit that sort of chilly stiffness which you see in magistrates when they’re fining people five quid for boyish peccadilloes."

"‘And shove him into a dungeon with dripping walls and see to it that he is well gnawed by rats.’"

"I started back to the house, and in the drive I met Jeeves. He was at the wheel of Stiffy's car. Beside him, looking like a Scotch elder rebuking sin, was the dog Bartholomew."

"I've seen him a couple of times in the arena, and was profoundly impressed by his virtuosity. Rugby football is more or less a sealed book to me, I never having gone in for it, but even I could see he was good. The lissomness with which he moved hither and thither was most impressive, as was his homicidal ardour when doing what I believe is called tackling. Like the Canadian Mounted Police he always got his man, and when he did so the air was vibrant with the excited cries of the morticians in the audience making bids for the body."

"As is so often the case with butlers, there was a good deal of Beach. Julius Caesar, who liked to have men about him who were fat, would have taken to him at once. He was a man who had made two chins grow where only one had been before, and his waistcoat swelled like the sail of a racing yacht."

"A man, to use an old-fashioned phrase, of some twenty-eight summers, he gave the impression at the moment of having experienced at least that number of very hard winters."

"To say that his conscience was clear would be inaccurate, for he did not have a conscience, but he had what was much better, an alibi..."

"His aspect was that of one who has been looking for the leak in a gas pipe with a lighted candle."

"‘You’re one of those guys who can make a party just by leaving it. It’s a great gift.’"

"It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required."

"My Aunt Agatha, for instance, is tall and thin and looks rather like a vulture in the Gobi desert, while Aunt Dahlia is short and solid, like a scrum half in the game of Rugby football. In disposition, too, they differ widely. Aunt Agatha is cold and haughty, though presumably unbending a bit when conducting human sacrifices at the time of the full moon, as she is widely rumoured to do, and her attitude towards me has always been that of an austere governess, causing me to feel as if I were six years old and she had just caught me stealing jam from the jam cupboard: whereas Aunt Dahlia is as jovial and bonhomous as a dame in a Christmas pantomime."

"I had not failed to interpret the significance of that dark frown, that bitten lip and those flashing eyes, nor the way the willowy figure had quivered, indicating, unless she had caught a chill, that she was as sore as a sunburned neck."

"She had a beaky nose, tight thin lips, and her eye could have been used for splitting logs in the teak forests of Borneo."

"It just showed once again that half the world doesn’t know how the other three quarters live."

"There are girls, few perhaps but to be found if one searches carefully, who when their advice is ignored and disaster ensues, do not say "I told you so". Mavis was not of their number."

"Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase."

"I don't condone murder but your charming use of Latin and ballyhoo has left me nostalgic for the whimsical class divisions of P. G. Wodehouse, and I've forgotten your homicidal idiosyncrasies already!."

"Wodehouse revived light English prose. He was the only Englishman who saw how the American vernacular revitalized the English language. Wodehouse's metaphors and similes replaced the epigram... Adoring public school life he remained the irrepressible fifth-former to the end of time to whom high-brows, Freud, aunts, magnates, club-bores and the Right Hon. "who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say 'When!'" were God-given targets for ragging."

"Wodehouse irritated earnest progressives, who saw him as a buffoon pandering to nostalgia and romanticizing the most effete elements in the upper classes."

"Now in the course of this broadcast I gave as the best writer of English now alive, Mr. P. G. Wodehouse... Now the end of writing is the production in the reader's mind of a certain image and a certain emotion. And the means towards that end are the use of words in any particular language; and the complete use of that medium is the choosing of the right words and the putting of them into the right order. It is this which Mr. Wodehouse does better, in the English language, than anyone else alive; or at any rate than anyone else whom I have read for many years past."

"His object is comedy in the most modern sense of that word: that is, his object is to present the laughable, and he does this with such mastery and skill that he nearly always approaches, and often reaches, perfection."

"A novelist has now, therefore, to choose between these alternatives: either to deal in stereotyped humour (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the works of P. G. Wodehouse are examples of ingenious variations on a laugh in one place—cf. humour of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which communicated a whole comic attitude)."

"Wodehouse is caught between the two poles of the modern age – mischievous but not vulgar, inoffensive but not anodyne. His gifts cannot be captured by the screen, the ultimate medium of the modern age, either. That's not to say he's outdated. His genius has been obscured, not promoted, by television exposure. Read him; don’t watch him. He is still timelessly funny."

"It is amusing to read the various wails about the villainy of Wodehouse. The harm done to England's cause and to England's dignity is not the poor man's babble in Berlin, but the acceptance of him by a childish part of the people and the academic government of Oxford, dead from the chin up, as a person of any importance whatsoever in English humorous literature, or any literature at all. It is an ironic twist of retribution on those who banished Joyce and honoured Wodehouse. If England has any dignity left in the way of literature, she will forget for ever the pitiful antics of English Literature's performing flea. If Berlin thinks the poor fish great, so much the better for us."

"The idiosyncrasy is in the false concord of phrases, the syntax of stately with vernacular, a Bible quotation collapsing into Fourth Form slang, the great Amen on the organ followed by a few notes of piffling piccolo voluntary. If you analyse the feeble mind that Wodehouse has given Bertie Wooster, you find that its feebleness, to our joy, is Bertie's inability to connect his teeming tags and images prosaically. The result is an English unofficial prose fluent with mad alienations, most savoury similes, but innocent, vulnerable and often wonderfully vivid."

"[T]he University [of Oxford] in conferring an honorary degree on Mr P. G. Wodehouse has suddenly exerted its failing strength in an action worthy of its tradition. It is speaking, as one of its most splendid functions to speak, for the educated class of the country, in recognizing Mr Wodehouse's place in literature, not perhaps, as Mr Agate claims, as "a little below Shakespeare's and any distance you like above anybody else's", but certainly as the equal among his contemporaries, as Sir Max Beerbohm and Mgr Knox, and high in the historic succession of the master-craftsmen of his trade."

"In a hundred years' time "the kind of man who reads P. G. Wodehouse for pleasure" may become synonymous with an extravagantly fastidious taste. And that is indeed as it should be. What can be more enviable than to enjoy the rewards of limitless contemporary popularity with the confidence, in the distant years, when copyrights have lapsed and royalties lost their importance, of a serene ascent into a rarer atmosphere, a little above the clouds, away from the crush where only the keen and the noble can follow?"

"For Mr Wodehouse there has been no Fall of Man; no "aboriginal calamity". His characters have never tasted the forbidden fruit. They are still in Eden. The gardens of Blandings Castle are that original garden from which we are all exiled. The chef Anatole prepares the ambrosia for the immortals of high Olympus. Mr Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in."

"The breadth of Wodehouse's appeal is also exceptional; down through the years, his hard-core fans have ranged from Bertrand Russell to Bix Beiderbecke, the great jazz cornettist, who could quote page after page from his stories. Herbert Asquith, during the difficult weeks that followed his defeat in 1918, found solace in reading Wodehouse, and two other British Prime Ministers, Arthur Balfour and Stanley Baldwin, were also ardent Wodehousians."

"In view of the pain it gives most writers to say a good word about other writers, perhaps the most eloquent testimonials to Wodehouse's talent are the warm compliments that have been paid him by colleagues, among them Rudyard Kipling, Agatha Christie, George Orwell, Malcolm Muggeridge, Peter Quennell, Ogden Nash, and Evelyn Waugh."

"When Reginald Iolanthe Perrin set out for work on the Thursday morning, he had no intention of calling his mother-in-law a hippopotamus."

"I hate plays. I've never seen the point of paying money to watch people shout a lot and pretend to die, and now that I'm the father of three young children I don't have to."

"One of the most unfortunate things about being an unfit Englishman cycling long distances in France is the number of signs that yell 'PAIN' down every high street."

"Lourdes is the Blackpool of Christianity."

"When people say it's a funny thing about them, you will probably be able to control your hysterics. They are only getting ready to announce the shattering fact that they don't like something. And it's not going to be something that's really quite awful, like suttee or apartheid; it's going to be something small."

"Some people collect paperweights, or pre-Columbian figures, or old masters, or young mistresses, or tombstone rubbings, or five-minute recipes, or any of a thousand other things including bruises, most of them satisfying, depending on the genes and the bank account and where the heart lies. My own collection is sunrises; and I find that they have their advantages. Sunrises are usually handsome, they can't possibly be dusted, and they take only a little room, so long as it has a window to see them from. Moreover, I can't give way to the urge to show off my collection to my friends. I can only talk about it, and they needn't listen."

"When I finally gathered, invented, stole, simplified, borrowed, and found a publisher for a clutch of reasonably foolproof recipes, I learned I had friends I hadn't known about—more proof that a mutual dislike can be quite as sound a basis for friendship as a mutual devotion."

"There are worse things than being fat, and one of them is worrying about it all the time."

"It isn't surprising that many children consider their parents to be a little dim, and that they sometimes try to update them. The fact that they don't usually try too hard is just as well; a thoroughly updated parent is an unappetizing sight."

"The subject of men and women is absolutely fraught with sex, which is as it should be."

"If the author is so interested in Science, why doesn't she take a course in it?"

"Man, staying at home is for chumps! You could shake the man's hand! YOU COULD TOTALLY SMOOCH HIM MAYBE. maybe not but still!"

"I collect power supplies like other men collect meaningful relationships! THAT IS TO SAY, AT THE RATE OF ABOUT ONE A YEAR"

"If you find you are not understanding my explanation for a joke, hit "F5" on your browser and the page will refresh and I will explain it again."

"I speculate that the genesis of the chicken-joke lies in some situation such as the one illustrated above, but over time the original context of the joke was lost, which left the chicken sadly decontextualized."

"They are "sexcellent". That is a pun for you, you will find lots of puns on the internet! Also: blonde jokes."

"Good luck distinguishing which sign is the REAL sign when my entire front lawn is covered with thousands of little green signs - each with a different number! Ahahahah! I'll be EVERY address in the whole freakin' township! And what are you gonna do about it? Hopefully, NOTHING!"

"Don't worry, it's very clear that the painting was done by a human, most likely a human with one eye removed and a feverent if incorrect understanding of design and anatomy."

"Of course it's easy to get on public transit! It's public transit."

"I saw The Mountain Ghost last night and they were really good but also scary! Actually they are called the Mountain GOATS and do not feature scary g-g-g-ghosts. Luckily."

"I'm totally applying assumed Creative Commons rights."

"I'm suddenly worried people will think that I believe their religion can be summed up on four sex-obsessed sentences."

"You're supposed to whore yourself out! Nobody will judge you! ACTUALLY EVERYONE WILL JUDGE YOU THAT'S HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS"

"We're all already aware of boobies; it is the general state of most people in North America! THANKS, MEDIA AND THE MALE GAZE"

"Strange things in the neighbourhood (partial list):"

"Failure is just success rounded down."

"Life with a Jolly Parent is a bit like life in a holiday camp. The beds are too small and there's an outbreak of Salmonella every five minutes."

"Flash Teacher: How to spot: He'll be the only member of staff who drives a customized Lada."

"For a start, let's look at the Grotto itself. By and large these are extremely aptly named, 'Grot' meaning rubbish and 'Oh' being exclamation of disappointed surprise."

"There are two distinct types of bike: The one you save up for and buy yourself, otherwise known as the 'Dream Machine' , and the one your parents buy for you, otherwise known as the 'Complete waste of space'."

"It's easy to forget you are in debt to the tune of £10, and to a woman who never forgets anything. Crikey, she can even tell you which Coronation Street character was the first one to have their brain removed (Footnote: And not have it replaced by acting talent unfortunately.)"

"Fishing is a jerk at one end of a line waiting for a jerk at the other end of a line."

"Partir, c'est mourir un peu... mais mourir, c'est partir beaucoup."

"Première communion de jeunes filles chlorotiques par un temps de neige."

"Marche Funèbre composée pour les Funérailles d'un grand homme sourd."

"It should not be an act of social disobedience to light a cigarette... unless you're actually a doctor working at an incubator."

"I don't bother with drugs myself 'cause I'm at that age now; I don't need to. If I want a rush, I just get out of a chair when I don't expect it. Forget to give yourself a couple of days notice before you tie your shoes. Whoosh! What a rush!"

"But you see, you measure what a good time you had by how much it fucks you up; you go out tonight, get ripped, get shitfaced. You'll wake up tomorrow and somebody will talk to you and ask, "How was last night?" You'll say, "It was fantastic! ...I can't see. No sens— no feeling, nothing, no sensation down the left side of my body. Oh! I can't even form sentences! You should've come; you would've at least lost an ear!""

"You see the button with the picture of the guy with the plate, and you push it, AND HE ARRIVES WITH A SANDWICH! ...And you think: "Yes! Yes! I control sandwich monkey! I live in magic land, magic land, magic land. It's my Wizard-Of-Oz phone.""

"People do... need... things... that are bad for them. They do. Stimulants and so on. They always have. Every so often, some politician or footballer or actor or whoever it is is caught in a hotel room, surrounded by hookers and cocaine. And everybody else goes: "Oh, the shame of it! How could he? How absolutely dreadful! I'd never do that... I've never had a chance, but I'd never ever do that! Oh, the disgust that courses through me right now — you could bottle it!" But what else are you supposed to give hookers in a hotel room? "Yogurt, anybody? I made some yogurt this morning, would you like some? It's got Granola and everything. You sure? Go on, have a bit.""

"EGGS! They're not a food, they belong in no group! They're just farts clothed in substance!"

"Beer must be made by food companies. It makes you wander the streets at 3 am looking for things to eat. "What's that, is it moving, get it!! It's a nun! FRY HER!! FRY HER!""

"I Know. I Know! Let's Go Potholing! In Croatia!" "Fine. I know a guy who can give us a lift... Me!"

"There are two types of wine essentially, and everybody knows this. There’s the one where you drink it and go, "Mmmm, well that’s ok, can we get 8 of those please, give us 8 of those." There’s the other one, you know, where you go "Ga…bt…jesus, WHAT is that?" Very, very occasionally I concede you will hit a subtle one. You know, where you go "Ga…ba…ah, actually that’s not that bad, that is. It’s quite nice.""

"Vodka is a very deceptive drink, because you drink it and you think, "What is this? This is pointless! It's— you can't taste it, you can't smell it... Why did we waste our money on this, bloody— why are we on a traffic island?""

"It turns you into two people: one of you's very nice, you'll go up to total strangers and say, "Come in, come in, sit down, for God's sake, have something. Have my bed." And then you'll go up to people you've known and loved all your life and say, "Get the fuck out of my house! Go on, get out! And leave a tip!""

"The most dangerous drink is gin. You have to be really, really careful with that. And you also have to be 45, female and sitting on the stairs. Because gin isn't really a drink, it's more a mascara thinner. "Nobody likes my shoes!" "I made... I made fifty... fucking vol-au-vents, and not one of you... not one of you... said 'Thank you.'" And my favourite: "Everybody, shut up. Shut up! This song is all about me.""

"The cookery programmes that everybody watches are ridiculous, and so are the house programmes. You know you do not need a fish tank in the atrium you haven't got. And people now, feel under pressure to perform in their lives. Who has the time though? Who really has the time to skin the baby rabbit and dip it in the duck's tears and nail it to the garden roof and get to work with the blow torch so it has just the right texture to match the squash you made that morning using just your elbows. Who has the time? Nobody lives like this! We go around thinking that everybody else does, you know? Because what happens is you come in from work, and you think... maybe at most, if you're getting very adventurous, you will think "TONIGHT, we will eat something that has two colours in it!" BUT YOU DON'T! You end up sitting in front of the television, watching these programmes, eating bread from the bag, dipping it in anything runnier than bread, because there's isn't time for this horse shit!"

"You should stay away from your potential. I mean, that is something you should leave absolutely alone! You’ll mess it up! It’s potential, leave it! And anyway, it’s like your bank balance, you know: you always have much less than you think.[...] Leave it as the locked door within yourself and then at least, in your mind, the interior will always be palatial. Wonderful gleaming marble floors, brocaded drapes. Mullioned windows, covered in mullions, whatever they are. Flamingos serving drinks. Pianos shooting out canapés into the mouths of elegant men and women who are exchanging witticisms... "Oh yes, this reminds me of the time I was in BudaPESHT with Binky... We were trying to steal a goose from the casino, muahahaha..." But it wont be like that[...] You don't want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve, if you gave it your all, if you harvested every screed of energy within you, and devoted yourself to improving yourself, that all you would get to, would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks."

"But look at the people who use [their potential] — who do actually give it everything... The Beckhams or Roy Keanes of this world. People charging! Running up and down the field, swearing and shouting at each other. Are they happy? No! They're destroying themselves! Who's happy? You! The fat fucks watching them, with a beer can balanced on your ninth belly, roaring advice at the best athletes in the world. "YOU WANKER!""

"You see, most modern technology doesn't work. It's supposed to free you, but it's a terrible trap, of course. Mobile phones for example: everybody has one now. I have one and they're awful. They've completely ruined, I mean, people ring you up and say "Hi, it's me, I'm in the bath!" and you go "Well, you're still an asshole, I hope you drown and hello." And they’ve completely dispensed with the whole drama of news, the simple idea of having something to relate, you know. When you could bound in from the garden and pick up the old Bakelite phone that weighted seven pounds and say “MIRIAM'S DEAD”. You can't do that anymore. You're probably there! [pantomiming being on phone] "Yes, her head's rolling back, spit's coming out, her eyes are going everywhere, here, I'll take a picture -click- you see what I mean? Sheeee's fucked!""

"Everybody does that now. We all take pics… you do the same with holiday photos. You record something to look back on it, even though you’re not really there when you’re taking the picture ‘cause you’re too busy recording it; so you retrospectively go to look back on where you weren’t and tell yourself you had a good time."

"My ideal body, you know, would be just probably something like, ahm... One eye, you probably only need one. A kind of sucker thing instead of teeth, because they just give you grief in the end, you know. And a long, long tube with my arse way over there so I don't have to deal with it. That would be ideal."

"This is our Smeg fridge, the whole house is made of Smeg. We're made of Smeg, aren't we, Roy?" "Yes, dear."

"I can't relax here. These people have no pubic hair anywhere. We have pubic hair on the ceiling."

"So, what else is going on? Music? Fine, here is The Beatles, The Stones come here later this evening, there is The Velvet Underground, Janis Joplin has just gone to lunch. So, do you want something to do in between now and then, I'd grow my hair and fornicate if I were you."

"What's going on? What do we do now? "Don't fuck anybody or you die! Never mind, here comes MC Hammer.""

"I remember when singers were singers. Ugly people. Aretha Franklin needed a lot of room to eat her chicken wings. Janis Joplin used to come out in clothes woven from her own vomit. Nina Simone, amazing singer, could look at a railway track and buckle it. It didn’t matter; They were beautiful people because of what they could do."

"I have tried... believe me, I have tried to like rap music. It makes me feel so very, very old. I have tried to get home with the downies."

"I got my pecs, I got limos, I got bitches, and all my limo's powered by bitch juice, and my spare pecs are in the limo." … "I'm gonna fuck you up. I'm gonna dig up your dad, and shove him up your mum and drink your blood from a drinking cup, you fuck!"

"Then this song came on—I will never forget it—it was called "The Funk Soul Brother." And I will always remember that because it was also all of the lyrics... and, er, it was that school of songwriting, you know, very easy on the words in case they get wasted, I don't know what— there's a shortage, and... it sounded like a million fire engines chasing ten million ambulances through a war zone and was played at a volume that made the empty chair beside me bleed. And it went, erm, "Funk soul brother... right about now... yeah... it's the, it's the funk soul brother... check it out. It's, er, well... it's the funk soul brother, essentially. He's, er, he's coming. He's coming at you. It's the... well... it's the funk soul brother." And after a while, I began to penetrate the meaning of this song, you know? I gathered that somebody was about to arrive, and everybody else was terribly excited—maybe he was bringing cake, or something, they didn't say—but the thing was, you see, he wasn't there yet. Ha ha, that was the hook! And I'm not saying it's a bad song, you know, or anything like that. All I'm saying is that if you get, I don't know, a broom, say, and dip it in some brake fluid, put the other end up my arse, stick me on a trampoline in a moving lift, and I would write a better song on the walls. That's all I'm saying."

"I can't swim. I can't drive, either. I was going to learn to drive but then I thought, well, what if I crash into a lake? Then I'm fucked!"

"You know, it's a sad day when your child looks at you and asks: "Daddy, is this organic?" "Organic? I grew up on Angel Delight! We didn't have anything in the house if it wasn't neon!""

"You don't need to turn the light switch on and off, again! You have absolutely NAILED DOWN the principle finding of that experiment; when you turn the lights off, daddy can't see ANYTHING. He steps on your toys trying to find you and kill you... And breaks his foot!"

"- Get into the bath."

"I don’t even see young people on the street anymore. I see youths. You know, how they’re described in police radio reports…. Slumped S-shapes in their hoods, beside their harrowed dogs and a bin full of burning grannies, all texting each other because they’ve given up on speech… plotting something terrible like how to make cider out of blood."

"I don't want to make any huge generalisations about women, I'm not here to do that, it's — it's vulgar. But all I'll say is that they have no feelings. Because it's actually men, you'll find, who are the far more romantic. Men are the people you will hear say, "I've found somebody. She's amazing. If I don't get to be with this person, I'm fucked. I can't carry on, no, I mean it, she's totally transformed my life. I have a job, I have a flat, it means nothing. I can't stand it, I have to be with her. Because if I don't, I'm going to end up in some bedsit, I'll be alcoholic, I'll have itchy trousers. I can't — I can't walk the streets any more." That is how women feel about shoes."

"I asked a women I was with once, simple question, I asked her 'Have you ever eaten pheasant?' See, it's direct, isn't it?! It's enclosed, it contains everything that needs to be said! And she said a wonderful thing. She said "Erm..."—she thought about it—and she said "Er, not really." What does that mean? On any level? I mean, did you suck it and throw it away? Did someone drop it in your drink? What happened? Was it a speeding car, one lick? WHAT, WHAT?!?!"

"When you're born, you have a finger up your nose, the other hand on your dick, and you get taller. And that is really it."

"All male arguments are very early '70s, Soviet-made, uni-directional trundling behemoths that say the same thing again and again and again: "I told you I would be late on Tuesday, I told you I would be late, I said it, I heard my own voice, I did say it... I told yoouuuu." Whereas women seem to have these amazing, slinky stealth bombers designed by Jaguar! With a lovely cream leather interior and infinite torque! That's why they can respond by saying "Yes, maybe, alright, but why is the fridge door open?" "I don't understand, I don't understand...""

"You cannot over estimate how infantile men are about sex! Men are people that have sex BECAUSE they have a headache... or are on fire, or have been shot in the head, or whatever it is!"

"Or when people break up, they always use a bunch of lines on each other, you know, terrible rubbish lies, like "It’s not you, it’s me, it’s me." It’s NEVER you, it’s always them! You should level with these people! Tell them! "You know that strange sound you used to hear when you were going to sleep? That was me CHEWING the bed, out of sheer boredom! OOOOHH, How I HATE you, I hate you so much it gives me energy! I have to get up early in the morning to hate you because there isn’t time enough in the day. Please, GO AWAY!" Or that other BULLSHIT: "I need more space!" People never quantify exactly how much space they really need.. do they? But strangely enough, it always seems to be the exact same height, depth and breadth as you."

"I'm kinda looking forward to being old, you know really really old, so that I can lean over in a restaurant with my son or daughter and say: "You know what I just did? I just pissed myself, you deal with it, then carry on telling me about you job or divorce or whatever the fuck it is, I’m not really listening to you to be honest, which one are you Siobhan or Simon? I can never tell.""

"What dya mean theres no fackin chips, I come ere on a plane, you cunt! I've got children ere, what am I spose to do with this fackin tomato fiasco."

"The weak, sensual, pleasure-loving French. You know, not going to war because they’re all still in bed at two in the afternoon, with the sheets coiled about their knees, lying, there scratching themselves, smoking a Gauloise inside a Gitane, sweating Nice sancerre. Before one of them sloughs off the sheets to pad around the kitchen naked. No, not naked, naked from the waist down. To emphasise their nakedity. Picking up yesterday's croissant crumbs with their sweaty feet. Slashing yesterday's paintings."

"Chocolate bread! That's how they start the day. It's only going to escalate from there. By lunchtime you're fucking everybody you know. I was in Paris recently—they are very good at pleasure. I was walking by a bakery—a boulangerie, which is fun to go into and to say, even—and I went in, a childish desire to get a cake—"Give me one of those chocolate guys," I said—and I was talking to someone on the street, took a bite... I had to tell them to go away! This thing! I wanted to book a room with it! "Where are you from, what kind of music are you into? Come on!" Proper, serious pleasure. Because they know they're gonna die. Nobody goes to church. You think, we're gonna die, make a fucking nice cake."

"Well, you know what they say about John, anyway?"

"People who get implants, it's so depressing, you know… People— I don't know. The route of that, you know, maybe they want more love or attention, or what it is, but they always go for the most obvious place, you know? Here... Well if you really want more attention, why not get them in your eyes? And then move you eyes down to where you nipples used to be, put you breasts up on your head, EVERYBODY will pay attention!"

"There's a guy, John Humphries, who does a lot of the interviews, and he sounds like he's been up since about midnight jogging on the spot to accuse people you've never heard of of lying. It's very aggressive right from the off. You turn it on and he goes: "DON'T LIE TO ME!! DON'T LIE TO ME! I'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR 45 YEARS, WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM, A FUCKIN TURNIP?!" [...] "WHERE ARE THE BOMBS? WHERE ARE THEY?!?!....Get up so I can kick you again, you lying fuck!""

"That's why the have the programmes presented by 45 guys; "Hi I'm Ted, I'm Bob, I'm Ralph, I'm Dick, I'm Dale, I'm Nick, I'm Will", and they keep changing all the angles of the camera. "I'm over here, I'm at this desk, I'm standing here" and Wendy comes up from under the desk with the financial weather."

"Death before dishonour." I always used to wonder, Hey, exactly how much dishonour are we talking about here? 'Cause I could handle quite a lot. I would, for instance, fellate a Smurf before I picked death. I'd cook him a little Smurf omelette as I was doing it, you know, I'd be perfectly happy doing that. Seasoning it with thyme, you know, listening to his happy satisfied Smurf lip smacks. But every man thinks about Smurfs. They don't say it, but they do. That's why I'm here—to be honest. Just once, you know, what would it be like? Nobody needs to know, you go away for the weekend. Just once, to have the blue salty bulb lolling on your tongue... if I don't say it, nobody else will."

"And then I did a very male sort of reckoning, I did the calculation, I thought, ‘right. there’s three of you and there’s one of me’—I’m rubbish at maths, by the way—but, in record time, I worked out that it would take, at least, three of me to defend myself against a third of one of them even if he only attacked me with his ass. I’m not a fighter, you know, I’m a bleeder. The best I can hope for would be to drown somebody else with my own blood... if I don’t drown myself before."

"And they say that after people make love there's a kind of melancholia that descends; la petite mort, you know, the little death. Well, I'm here to tell you, after a romantic night in with yourself, there's a very acute sensation of failed suicide. And I think a lot of that, if you're men is because of the quality of the gear you've got to work with. I mean it's horrible looking. Like a deep sea fish that ate its own arse after about an hour. What's going on down there?! Do something nice, like a kittens head... or something and you could just tickle its chin until it got sick... it would be alright..."

"You're looking for a lump in a bag of lumps, that can take some time"

"Bagpipes covered in hair"

"This stage, if it hasn't already, probably will see a production of the Vagina Monologues. Which I cannot wait to see, because it sounds so fabulously fucking stupid. Everybody knows that if female genitalia could speak, it would sound exactly like Enya."

"You’re never going to go. Why would you go? It’s a disgusting place. It’s always wet even when it’s dry. There’s nothing there. Farmers aren’t really people, you know this. They’re just necessary, we need somebody to kill cows."

"You're supposed to eat the cows. They're great big lumbering stupid things - they'd be everywhere if we didn't eat them."

"NEVER try the local thing. You know why it's local? Because it's shit, that's why it's local. You eat it, you'll become one of them, you'll turn red and start spouting bigotry and eating tweed with lamb fat dribbling down your chin, don't go near any of that stuff."

"Then you get these articles about how unhealthy life is in the city. You know; mobile phone tumours - far more likely in the city; Well you know what, so is everything else! Including sex, coffee and conversation."

"They have sheets of ham so large that if you bite out the middle, you've saved yourself the price of a poncho."

"America is like the really bad flatmate of the world: 'Oh sorry, did I break all your shit? I d'n't know it was yours. Yeah, I'll replace it sometime... with my stuff.'."

"You had an empire once, Britain. Had a great empire! Impressively commandeered and sequestered from the rest of the world, with great style. You just marched in and said 'You, you and you—fuck off, we're having tiffin.'."

"You learn very very quickly that it is mostly about swearing, actually. That's all you're doing, swearing, in a box with wheels."

"I got bored of the tedious conversations, talking to the dealer in a stairwell where you're not supposed to be, then going back to a depressing room and spending nine hours locked up going "eeerh", then going back to get more with what little money you have left."

"I usually never leave the house, but we went to Australia recently—the whole family was there—it was a ridiculous place. Located three quarters of a mile from the surface of the sun, people audibly crackling as they walk past you on the street. That's why they all barbecue, you don't need to cook somewhere like that, you just bring the shit out, fling it on a grill and it bursts into flames. It's not supposed to be inhabited, and when they're not doing that, frying themselves outside, they all fling themselves into the sea, which is inhabited almost exclusively by things designed to kill you; sharks, jellyfish, swimming knives, they're all in there."

"You're talking to a modern, nice, affable German person and they're saying to you something like 'You know, vell, it's a critical time now for Germany within Europe, also globally, economically ve are pretty good, ve have been better. But ve are very vibrant in the theater and arts...' and all the time you'll be listening to this, you're thinking Mmm, yeah, mmm... Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler..."

"German food is so bad, even Hitler was a vegetarian. "Would you like some more shtrudleghraf on your shamlw?" How appetising does that sound?"

"It sounds like typewriters eating tin foil being kicked down the stairs."

"Because that's still how Irish people are seen, as twinkly-eyed fuckers with a pig under their arm, high-stepping it around the world, going 'I'll paint your house now, but watch out, I might steal the ladder later, ohohoho!' Which is only half true!"

"Somewhere like Ireland, it's more hot-blooded, there's drama included in the fabric of every day, it's there every moment. People wake up going OH GOD! WHAT TIME IS IT?' 'It's six minutes to nine.' 'IS IT? I THOUGHT IT WAS ONLY SEVEN MINUTES TO, WE'RE ALL FUCKED! WHAT'S THE WEATHER LIKE?—DON'T TELL ME, I CAN'T BEAR TO HEAR, I'LL LOOK FOR MYSELF. AAAH! IT'S FIERCE MILD! WHAT ARE WE HAVING FOR BREAKFAST? ARE YOU GONNA DO THAT THING AGAIN WITH THE BREAD WHERE YOU PUT IT IN THE BOX AND BURN IT? WHOSE TROUSERS ARE THESE? COME ON, WE'LL BOTH TRY THEM AT ONCE AND SEE WHO WINS.' It's just more emotional at all times. For no real reason."

"If somebody blocks you when you're walking, you're positively Edwardian in your manners. You do this sheepish little smile together, and you step aside. And you both do it at the same time, and you go "for goodness sake, what a to-do! Oh-ho-ho, dear me! I'll just eh, I'll just—oh, we did it again, can you believe it, I can't believe it! We should be on the stage! One more time, I'll just—oh, how did we ever get this far as a species!" But, for some reason, in a car, that becomes "YOU SPUNK BUCKET!".... from, you know, an eighty nine year-old church warden."

"Would you like red or white wine with your piece of vulcanised lizards cock from the moon? How about an extra bread roll, there to dip in your otter vomit pate?" And you're going, "Red or white wine, well, what would you like, darling? I don't know, what would you like?", all to block out the thought that's in your mind which is - "We're gonna die, we're all gonna die, we're all gonna die, right now. The plane is made of metal, the wings are made of metal, we're all eating, and I'm the only non-terrorist aboard, we're all going to die."

"Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California. There's a perfectly ordinary English sentence. How did that happen!? Do you know how that happened? 'Cause I'll tell you. Do you know how he got into that position? He got there... by lifting things. Now, you and me, we avoid lifting things; It's unpleasant. Especially heavy things. Even a five-year-old child knows this. He'll go "No, ha ha, fuck it, no, I'll go and stick Lego up my arse, I'm not doing that, no no." He took a different approach. He lifted the heavy- and you know, you lift something if you have to. Piano falls on granny, you lift the piano… 'cause Granny has mixed feelings about the whole situation. Sunday lunch continues. He didn't do any of that. He went over to the heavy thing, and lifted it, and put it back down and didn't move it anywhere... and then he did it again, hundreds of times, and he said to people who stopped to observe this aberrant behaviour, "Look how good I am... at lifting the heavy thing, in my underpants." Now that may seem a little dim. But it was they who said "You're the man. You're the one we want to deal with immigration, and water rates, and taxes, and all that kinda shit." But wait—what we need to know is, how bad was his predecessor at that job? This must've been someone who came to work covered in children's blood every morning."

"How small does your cock have to be, to make you walk into a car showroom and say: "Listen, I need something the size of a school, so people know I'm around.""

"Most heterosexual people in this country, and around the world, meet each other, and get together with one another when they’re totally, totally drunk. Smashed out of their minds they could not spell their own face. And they go home with that person! And you might spend months with that person, or a year, or you might have a family! This is what happens, this is how you meet. But you wouldn’t buy a toaster when you’re drunk, ‘cause that’s too important. It's got to be crispy in just the right way, hasn't it?"

"You hear people in restaurants competing with each other "I love you". "No, I love you". "Yeah, but I REALLY love you. I love pencils that you have sucked and thrown away ten years ago. I love your eyebrows and your ancestry and EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU! Just eat your food and let me love you, don't speak!" But what they don’t know, of course, at the time is that that dialogue is actually from a really bad science fiction film written by nature - really, what they're saying to one another is: "The race must continue, the race must continue! My vadudium is pointing at your phenungulator, the race must continue!""

"The candlelight dances off her mahogany-coloured skin as she un-robes, and she is smiling from the very middle of herself, and you look at them and you think "This is the one, this is it" and then—and then the cage comes down!"

"You’d be alone in the kitchen and twilight would be dwindling, and you could hear the far off cries of the other children playing nearby. You’d be alone in the kitchen because it was your special treat time, where the jelly would come out just for you, and your mother would appear at your side just as a vision of Laura Ashley print dress, smelling of magnolias and biscuits and put the jelly in front of you, and you would pull your chair in. Then the old fashioned bar of ice cream would come down, the one that had to be cut with a breadknife before the two sides were flanked with wafers. You would lift your little spoon up excitedly and winkle out that first divet of black jelly... AND THEN THE CAGE COMES DOWN! The cage with the Japanese fighting spiders inside, your mother strikes a match off her forearm and tells you to dance in the front room for money... You, you never forget that shit, I mean it never goes away."

"Men look at breasts the way women look at babies. 'Aw, isn't that lovely.'."

"Your nose hair... which is grey... is in my eye."

"The meaning of the word "gay" has changed. It used to mean all colourful and happy and homosexual, but now it's a word children use to describe something that's a little bit meh. "You're eating Weetabix? Oh, that's so gay.""

"When you say 'Bedtime, bedtime, bedtime!' that's not what the child hears. What the child hears is 'Lie down in the dark... for hours... and don't move... I'm locking the door now.'."

"Because their bones are growing, they can only sleep in certain positions, obviously. The crucifix and the swastika tend to be the most popular. Sometimes a combination of the two."

"Children are actually very sophisticated. They sleep in your bed for a reason. The child is born, it takes a look around, and thinks "Well this isn't quite what I'd hoped for. All these people are idiots... I wouldn't've have painted the house like this at all... But I've got to make the best of it. I've got to maximize my resources. So the key thing is to stop these people from having any more children.""

"Now, I meant to talk about something else earlier on, and I've forgotten what it was. I've remembered what it is again, but I've also forgotten. And that's really what adult life is like most of the time."

"That’s why adults are confused a lot of the time. Adults are terribly confused, messed up people. That’s because they forget, really, that they don’t have to pretend all the time. Really, the fact is that you’re not an adult at all - you’re just a tall child holding a beer, having conversations you don’t understand… "The Middle East? Yeah, I know it was really bad. I wouldn’t have done that. A hysterectomy? Yeah, very painful, the shoulder is a very painful area.""

"Children aren't like that, which is why they look so young, 'cause they always have a sense of style and purpose. When they're walking around, they have a very definite purpose, they're walking. And it's a great walk as well, it's not an adult's sort of bemused shuffle, it's that 'I'm going over here.' And you say 'Why are you going over there?' 'Because I have a harmonica.' 'What are you doing with the harmonica?' 'I'm going to put it in the toilet.' 'Why are you doing tha—' 'Enough questions, goodbye!'"

"Well I’m here, you know? Your house is a medley of disgusting smells, there’s nothing to eat, everybody’s wearing bathrobes, there’s no bar, I can’t fuck anybody. Why am I here?"

""What do women want?" As though it's really mysterious. As though it's a big deal. All that women want is what anybody wants. You know, friendship and companionship and respect and a certain amount of leadership with submission and a kind of cooperation at all times and pre-emptive empathy and you know, general telepathy. It's no big deal, is it? [...] Traditionally, women have been attracted to uniforms. So it's not difficult to know what women want. Fascists - that's really what they're all after!"

"Cool, calm, and unemotional. Protestant, for short. It's a fantastic religion, it makes absolutely no demands upon you at all, which is why it's not a great religion. All great religions are built on shame. You don't have any of that if you're Protestant. You go to the church, sing a few hymns, have a cup of tea, everybody goes home and has a wank."

"I am actually walking towards the biscuit, I didn't realise I was, but now I do, oh oh oh I am actually eating the biscuit...oh no, oh the shame, oh I don't know what's better, THE BISCUIT OR THE SHAME..oh oh the shame."

"And yet, people still turn to Jesus. You will notice though that the kind of people who turn to Jesus tend to be the sort of people who haven't done that well with everybody else."

"If you are going to have an afterlife, why not just have a physical afterlife? Just come back as a tentacle with a set of lips looking for huge lumps of chocolate to fuck, it'd be much more reasonable."

"I'm quite a compulsive person—I only worked this out recently—I'm compulsive, but I'm also very indecisive. I don't know what I want, but I know that I want it now."

"We want women to look like cakes! ""

"What is that? What is that supposed to be? It's never really casual, you always have to turn up. It's never casual unless you're both wearing Sherlock Holmes hats or something. You're covered in crisps, one of you's eating an omelette, the other one's doing a crossword, then it's kind of casual."

"Fruit... it's just God showing off. "Look at all the colours I know!""

"Do you know how fat you are, do you? No, you don't, 'CAUSE YOUR FACE IS AN ISLAND TRAPPED IN A SEA OF FLAB! I would stab you to death... but I can't afford to take the two weeks off work!"

""Listen, LISTEN... I agree... with everything... you're carving... on the kitchen table, I do. But do you think maybe this might have something to do with your per-ARGH!"(falls backward as if kicked). That first high kick to the thorax generally does the trick."

"I live in Scotland, have you been to Scotland? [a few of the audience whoop and cheer] See that's the exact same number of people, as answered that question in the affirmative when I asked it in England... and erm, people... English people, don't go up there, it's nearly half the country, and you say "Why don't you go?" and they go "Ahh, well, you know, it's very dark and dreary"… 'cos they get so used to the crocodiles and the tropical storms down there in England. "Dark and dreary, you can't understand the accents, the food's disgusting, and a lot of violence, a lot of drugs, people injecting temazepam into each other's stumps... other wise I'd go, you know?""

"It's a myth that men don't have their own version of PMT, of course they do - every woman knows this. It's a very simple experiment to conduct, all you've got to do is be with a man, wait until he starts doing something and then go up and talk to him. "WHAT?! What is it now?! I'm opening fish fingers can't you see?! You come in here, walking on the floor - breathing the air like it's yours - talking and talking and I'm doing something! Look they've fallen on the floor, are you happy?! Are you happy now?! Every time I try and do something for myself, you carbonize and then shit on my dreams... You're just like your your whole family! Why do I even dare to think I could dream I could imagine I could hope?!""

"Men don’t know anything! Men don’t know when their lives became so entirely awful, when everyone else turned into such a tosser! A man does not know how he came by the half a pie he is holding in his hand. And scientists—those frauds!—seize on this, and try to use it as proof of the mysteries of human consciousness and the unknowable nature of the brain, which is rubbish! The brain is the simplest organ in the body. It only has three bits. There’s the front bit, which is the bit you scratch when you come in at half one in the morning, and the person you live with says, “Where the fuck were you?”. The middle bit, which tries to come up with the excuse. And the back bit, which plays the last song that was on in the pub."

"99,9% of men are convinced that they have to live silently, with a bitter irony of the twist of fate, that means, nobody knows they're really a spy. And an amazing guitarist. Men give serious time and thought on "How would I deal with, if the rocket came down of that alley right now? Yeah, I'd handle that situation pretty well!" A spy who plays guitar at night! I basically think, you know, I'm what would have happened if James Dean had lived and discovered carbohydrates and orthopaedic shoes. You have to tell yourself this bullshit just to keep going! Cause you're constantly being reminded how redundant you are!"

"Sometimes is just, you know... insulting."

"And women as a group, en masse, do show contempt for men, en masse... as a group, you hear a lot of contempt for men: "Oh look! Look at them, look! There they go! One of them's trying to DO something"."

"We end up back with each other. There’s nowhere else to go. People! You've a very important, early decision to make in your life: are you going to be alone, or are you going to be with somebody else? Are you going to be sane, or not lonely? A couple is a strange thing; it’s an organism that’s half as intelligent as the most intelligent member. And you both know who it is! ‘Cause you’ve got two people walking around together all the time trying to remember all the different shit they have to lie about to each other!"

"Children are very overprotected now, in lots of ways. We're very nervous about them. You know, people go, "Don't go outside! Or inside! Get into the cupboard with some spinach!" When I was a child they'd kick you out and you weren't expected to come back until there were bats!"

"Like when you watch young people on the street and they’re talking. And doing those handshakes that take three quarters of an hour, with the amazingly younger language: “Yeah, yo, dawg, kicking back with the chill, rad.” WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHY CAN’T YOU JUST SAY HELLO?"

"The first half of your life is spent getting over yourself. You think you’re amazing, unique. Young people walk around going, "You know the funny thing is I was just in the kitchen but now I’m here in the bedroom, get a load of me! I just go on and on!" And that’s around the age when you meet somebody else – when you’re totally unbearable. Two young, fit, healthy attractive people in love? There’s nothing worse to look at in the world! Going around going, "I can’t believe I met you cause you’re amazing and I’m amazing and we’re surrounded by shitheads, it’s just amazing! Hey, I know this really good bar, let’s go and make it better." In the second half of your life you realise how like every other hump who drew breath you really are. Except you’re MORE boring."

"People will kill you. Over time. They will shave out every last morsel of fun in you with little, harmless sounding phrases that people uses every day, like: "Be realistic!"[...] You never hear someone go "Be realistic! Let me oil you.""

"Adulthood feels like walking around in the desert with a bag over your head, being bumped into by people who rob you as they bore you."

"Would you please - stop - taking - pictures - on your tiny - annoying (whispering) fucking camera. This is happening to you in real time, you are having the experience. It's not much point to verify that you were at the event when you're actually here."

"You ask women, “You know how painful is it? What are talking about here?” And you don’t get an answer, you get anger...and it always starts with the melon...“IMAGINE A MELON!...COMING THROUGH YOUR FACE!...fuckin' stay there, I’ll get a melon!”"

"It's not even a drink. It's a way for having the cops around without using a phone."

"Here your Prime Minister has an approval rating of 75%... which is- What's he doing? Nobody ever gets 75%, is he coming round at night, with a pot roast, touching you on the knee and telling you that you’ve lost weight? What’s going on?! This is madness, nobody gets 75% not even when you’re madly in love with somebody, and you’re fucking each other’s brains out do you give each other 75%! You’ve got to hold a bit back, keep the other person guessing you know? ...keep it at a steady 40..."

"Or Berlusconi, in Italy, right; the envy of the world, Italy, in terms of history, art and culture, 98 different political parties, and they still managed to elect him! He’s so fucking crooked he sleeps on a spiral staircase! So thoroughly corrupt, every time he smiles an angel gets gonorrhoea! He's had so many face-lifts, his face has moved to the top of his head, you have to get on a step-ladder to watch him lie!"

"And we all think that we’re very rational and very secular, but we make gods all the time. Everybody went apeshit when Barack Obama got elected. I was delighted. Everybody was thrilled: a sane, rational, intelligent human being in an important office. Great! But his biggest problem is everybody else! Is us! ‘Cause everybody’s in love with him! He stands up there - he’s very convincing and commanding and makes sense - he says: "It’s a difficult time, everyone needs to work together and be realistic about what we need to do..", and all that stuff - and everbody’s looking at him going: "NO! You do it! You’re SUPER JESUS. You’re so handsome when you’re serious. Do you work out?""

"We need to believe something, and you’re not allowed to believe in religion… Well, you can, but people will laugh at you and throw things. ‘Cause it was just sort of decided in the 20th century that religion is basically a formalized panic about death. Look at the Catholic church, the campest organization on the planet with the purple robes, gold bits on the side, jewellery so big if they let it fall it would kill people... What else can it be, but this sort of ritual of panic about death? “DEATH IS COMING! Quick, put on the gold hat!”"

"You see, people never really grow up. I don’t mind most religious people, I talk to them. I listen to them, you know, banging on. “I prayed very hard and then the fairy came.” “Did he? Good. Have a biscuit.” I only get annoyed when they try and make me see the fairy. “You have to let the fairy into your heart.” Look, I wouldn’t let him into my garden, okay? I’d shoot him on sight, if he existed, which he doesn’t. Now have another biccie and be quiet, will you please? But you can absolutely understand the desire to believe in something, to support you. Children like to be supervised by adults. That’s why children go, “look, no hands” or “look, I can do this” or “I’m really good at this”. Whatever it is. Because it validates them, it shows them that they are there, that somebody else is watching over them. Grown-ups are the same, not that there is any such thing as a grown-up, really. They liked to be watched by something. Because the planet’s not gonna miss us, when we’ve finished fucking it up and killing each other. So we needed the idea of God to have somebody to miss us, or at least notice that we weren’t there anymore."

"A couple of days ago I saw one of those signs outside of churches and it said "Jesus said: I am the light of the world". Which is a very male view, you know, if Jesus had been Jesusina it would've been more modest. You know because it's a women, she would've been traditionally more modest. Jesusina would've gone: "Well I'm quite bright"."

"So, yes, death. When you're young, you think about it… Well, you don't really think about it, you know - you have the intelligence of raspberry jam, you're not thinking about anything. But it's there, as a motive force, making you do things. Go and get a job. Go and find a flat. Find somebody else. Put them in the flat. Make them stay. Get a toaster. Go to work. Get on the bus. Look at your boss. Say, "fuck". Sit down. Pick up the thing. Go blank. Scream internally. Go home. Listen to the radio. Look at the other person. Think, "WHY? Why did this happen?" Go to bed. Lie awake! At night! Get up. Feel groggy. Put the things on - your clothes - whatever they're called. Go out the door, into work - same thing! Same people, again, it's real, it is happening, to you. Go home again! Sit, Radio, Dinner - mmm, GARDENING, GARDENING, GARDENING, death. And so, the young woman thinks that if she has the right curtains, she can keep death and all other problems at bay. But the young man knows that the only way to keep death at bay, is by having sex pretty much constantly. Now, because nature's so clever, it makes the couple compromise by giving them children, so they never have to have sex again, and then the children pull the curtains down so there was NEVER anything to worry about in the first place!"

"The other morning, I woke up. I was frightened – I’m always frightened in the morning, I don’t know where I am. But I heard this beautiful reassuring sound, it sounded like my childhood. I thought, what’s that? Is it? Church bells behind the hill? Or, no – it’s an ice cream van, in the rain. It was me, BREATHING!"

"You should be as alive as you can, until you're totally dead!"

"Science is a joke. Look at the scientific explanation for the origin of life as we know it. No wonder we have creationists, you know, those people - God love them - who tell their children that, you know, originally we all went to school with dinosaurs, or whatever it is that they tell them. But no wonder they exist, because listen to the explanation for the origin of life itself - it doesn’t sound very scientific. "There was a big BANG! And then we all came from monkeys." "What? That’s it?" "Yeah, shop's closed, fuck off!" I need more than that! There must be more than - BANG! *monkey sounds* "Honey I’m home!" - come on! It’s such a boring theory, anyway! It’s much more interesting if you reverse the order."

"You know, people come in here with their fucking camera phones - everything’s a camera nowadays; you pick up a piece of fruit, it takes a picture of you. Or the computers which are everywhere which is proof that we like to be watched. That what we’ve replaced God with, technology! We’re fucking afraid to be alone, in a lift, in a taxi cab, we need cameras everywhere recording us unless we realise we’re alone, we might do something scary... like whimper, I don’t know!"

"Perfume is a good example of a product gone all wrong. When I was a child, it was a semi-exotic thing and it was called something stupid like "Fleur de Fleur" and you would give it to your mother or aunty at Christmas and it was advertised by some dopey looking woman in a field of sunflowers and she looked like she'd been hit by a tractor because she was going *flails with arms*. She couldn’t just get over how nice she smelled. Now, because we’re so jaded, we’ve consumed so much, our attention can only be grabbed in a violent way. So it’s always advertised by these constipated, exo-keletal bitches who are sneering at you and it’s called something horrible like "Homicide"! "Dysentery"! "Urban Dysentery" for boys and girls!"

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH US?! We're the only organism the planet is actively asking to fuck off! By burning things, and freezing things, and melting things on us! It's like going past the ocean and seeing it spit out whales, "Fuck off, I've had enough of you!" Passing the eucalyptus tree as the koalas hang on, the tree's going [Swaying violenty] "Get - the fuck - away - from me!""

"These fingers are from Florence. Yves Saint Laurent himself designed my arse. My nipples are reconstructed from an early unfinished blue print by Coco Chanel, hence their lopsided charm. One of them is on my shoulder. The other five I keep handily between my toes, which, in themselves are a bit embarrassing. But fuck it, it was the 80’s, you had to have suede."

"Young people, should be allowed to go up to one another and say “Hi” and that’s it – they go off and do something wonderfully stupid together...like have a gap year, there’s no other justification for that as far as I can see. What do young people have gap years for? They haven’t done anything yet! Why don’t they have a full year, where they do 9 times as much work as they’ve ever done in their life to prepare them for what the rest of adult hood feels like - which wandering around a desert, with a bag over your head, being bumped into by people who rob you as they bore you."

"You know, fucking mornings! What is that about? That time is a huge lie. "Get up, get up! We’re going to be late! Quickly! Late, imagine it! The disaster if we’re late! What’ll happen if we’re late? I can’t even bear to think about it!" Late is an idea. Late is bullshit. It doesn’t matter how fucking late you are, you can turn up in your pyjamas scratching your nuts with a fork, the same old shit’s gonna be there. It’s a lie! People running up to you saying, "what do you think?" in the morning! "What do you think?"! "Think? Think?! I’m not even fucking breathing, go away with your 'think'!" It takes you three quarters of an hour to find your face and apologise to it. And how do they lure you back into the world, into the human race, into consciousness itself? With the great traditional breakfast! As eaten here and in Britain and Ireland and lots of other places: Fried slices of dead pig, tubes of dead pig, some fungus and a chicken's period on a plate, "WELCOME BACK! WE MISSED YOU WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING! ENJOY!" Of course you can always have the healthy option, of course you can, of course you can!... Some yummy cereal, mmhmmmm dust with milk! Says it right there on the box in big primary coloured letters ‘contains fibre’. Goody gumdrops, I was up all night fantasizing about fucking fibre. You know that feeling when you get a belly full of fibre and you can skip round the room taunting everybody who didn’t get theirs? Remember all those times in your life when you stopped strangers in the street and screamed at them “I need some fibre!""

"- I know what you're thinking!"

"Women are not allowed to be seen to enjoy themselves on lots of ways. They have a test for that in Ireland now, they’ve scientifically perfected that. The Madonna-Whore-Quotient of a woman. You know, if when a woman puts her hand together to pray, and when she’s crying the blood and she levitates and you don’t get a sustained hum in A Flat, she’s a fucking whore!"

"Where is the cake? Cake is the language of love. I don't see any cakes in the building. You know, people say that to you: "I love you, I love you!" Yeah? Gimme a fuckin' eclair."

"The ultimate human shopping list: I’d like some illegal, some forbidden, some frowned upon and some downright disgusting, please. I’ll have that to go, thank you!"

"You have to have a good relationship with pleasure, Australians seem to, on the whole your approach seems to be to go, "What's that? Ahh, yeah, it's one of those" which is a lot healthier than the Irish one, which is to go, "What's that? That looks nice. I'll wait till everyone's asleep, then I'll steal it, so nobody will see me enjoy myself and then I won't have to feel ashamed. I can just let the guilt fester for the rest of my life and spend all my remaining years drunk.""

"- Where are you?"

"And I’ve been on the road for too long, I know I have, because I was in the supermarket the other day, and I saw this tiny, heartbreaking can of beans. And it really made me want to cry. I just thought how old or sick or small do you need to be to need those beans? And it was on a high shelf, you know, you’d be climbing the ladder for days just to get at those four beans."

"And what is the point of putting a picture of the perfectly ordinary Irish smile on the box of cigarettes? what's that all about? what you supposed to achieve?"

"And the thing is woman do have to do all kinds of things themselves. And they lie about it 'cause of all the pressure. Woman go and get their hair made bullet-proof and get the implants. The silly clothes and the stupid shoes everybody wears now. You know these... And they say: "Oh, l enjoy. l did it for me, you know. l like the fact that it takes me 45 minutes to get in or out of a chair." l've always wanted to look like a prawn who's being airlifted. lt's a total lie. That's not the kind of thing a person does for themselves. You know what l did for me? I had an eclair inside an eclair. That's the kind of thing you do for yourself."

"The truth is that women are like chick peas under a psychopath's hat. They can be cherishable and zingy and suprising. But you ask too many questions and you get killed."

"Don’t get feminist on me! Look, I’m not a feminist, 'cause I'm a man. I'm not qualified. I can't be a feminist. Just like most women.. If women were serious about feminism they would have everything that feminists talk about getting. Equal pay, you could have that tomorrow! IF... women would give up bitching about one another for FIVE MINUTES. Which doesn’t seem to be possible."

"If you're a young man, you know, you live in a sexual tyranny anyway and your penis is Kim Jong. Sex decides everything. You can have a car crash. You lie in the ditch thinking: "What is the erotic twist in the situation? I can't quite seem to see it yet"."

"Who sleeps, really? If you’re a proper adult person in the 21st century, how can you relax, at all? Your mind keeps churning. You think, "What if this thing happens?! What if that thing happens?! What if they happen together?! What if I lose my job?! I hate my fucking job! But what if I lose it?" Your mind is a hive of worms. And worms don't live in a hive, so it already feels unnatural. You lie in bed, beside your partner... "What if I died?!" If you don't have a partner, you just think, "What if I died? ...Okay, I would be dead." But if you do have a partner and family, you'd think, "What if I died? How would they cope?" They wouldn't! They would be out in the street in half an hour, stealing food from seagulls mouths! Or worse! They WOULD cope! They'd have a much nicer, cleaner house! And an improved sense of self-worth. Probably more money! And inevitably your partner would find somebody within the first 3-4 days, and begin a tumultuous sexual relationship. They would be having sex a lot in your bed when you were dead! The morning, the afternoon, the evening, and the night time would be the main times they would be having sex, in your bed, when you were dead. Feeding each other lobster with their bare hands, to give each other more energy to try it in new and more demanding ways. When your realise you are lying besides somebody who is waiting for you to die! And what's more, they're sleeping to make the time go faster."

"Days are stupid length. They are just long enough to get regret and then you have to go to bed."

"Scotland, the country where they fry the food five times to make sure it’s dead; the country where they invented bacon flavour mouthwash."

"You laugh at the North, you think they’re all funny little short people who live in a big pie. Trying to sort out their relationship with the definite article. Throwing darts at their dinner."

"Some people don’t like Mr Cameron. Mr Cameron and his cube of air. He doesn’t seem to know where to put that thing down. He can’t find a place for it. I think the reason he can’t get rid of it is because it contains the essence of the Big Society, and nobody wants that shit."

"The belief system that if you smiled hard enough into the face of God, you would eventually shit money."

"You know what you think, you know where you are on the spectrum... You’re Left or you’re Right really, that’s it. And if you’re left-wing, you’re boring. That’s the truth. Nobody wants to hang around with you, you’re very dull. You’re the voice of conscience, y’know the one saying: “Now look. Put it down, we should all be nice to one another. Let’s try and not eat everything today.” Very dull voice... The right-wing... Cruel? Yes. Vicious? Certainly. But honest. Not a sophisticated philosophy, it just says: “What is this? Do we fuck it or eat it? Let’s try half and half.”... Now you might be liberal! You could be, I forgot. You could be one of those thoughtful, troublesome people. People who say: “Well things are actually a little bit like this AND a little bit like that. Soooo, let’s do whatever you say.” If you’re liberal, you have no purpose. You are the thing in your kitchen you never use. Something you bought once, while you were out at a market feeling frisky."

"They tell you, you can get everything you need from pulses and lentils and things like that. Yeah. Everything you need, except company, which is not to be had, because you are dying, bent double in a miasma of your own toxic farts."

"What does anyone think or believe any more? Belief itself is treated with disgust. Belief is now regarded as a kind of fat marbling the brain. Who here believes in organized religion? (NO!) Who doesn't? (AUDIENCE CHEERING LOUDLY) You see? People in the West don't believe in anything! And we're proud of it! "What you believe in?" "Nothing! Nothing!" "What did you have for lunch? I don't fucking believe you!" We don't believe in anything. We treat religion with contempt. Faith. All that rubbish. What are you, a child? Believing in this, you do good and then you know, you die and then you get a biscuit! What are you, a fucking idiot? What's wrong with you? We don't believe in anything! Because we know about science! Believe in science! That's the only thing we know about! The atoms and quarks and things. We don't understand it! Any of it! But... But that's the case. So, that's totally different to having a faith! Isn't it?"

"The dark creates all kinds of things. The dark creates music, particular kinds of music. Horrible folk music you don't want to listen to. And heavy metal which they love in dark places. They love it in Scandinavia. They have all these metal bands, you know? And they're not like the English ones or American ones that have names like Metallica and Megadeth and so on. The names are... 'Cause English isn't their first language in Scandinavia even though they all speak it. So they call their bands things like Anus Hammer, Egg Smuggler, all that stuff. lt's a very interesting look, heavy metal, you know... You have everything down here. You've got jazz and ska and everything, you know. Whatever, folk music, too, probably. Folk music has its own look. lt has a... You know, people wear dungarees 'cause they say, "l'm a man or a woman of the people. This isn't my main thing, you know. l'm just like you really. My main job is harvesting turnips. Anyway, this next number is called Cross-eyed Mary of the Lowlands. l'd like to dedicate it to my wife." And then there's jazz, you know, where you get people in suits but they're non-conformist suits 'cause they're wearing a pink shirt with a green jacket and a blue tie and trousers too complex to describe. 'Cause they're saying, "Yes, l'm wearing a suit but l work for me. And my job is to play the electrified tractor horn till 5:00 in the morning, so fuck you." Heavy metal is a very interesting look. The look is a kind of an argument. lt's an argument against Darwinism. Because what the people who are involved are saying, is that attraction is not necessary for reproduction. That's why they shave all the hair off where it would naturally be and cultivate it in places it shouldn't be. And that's why the music is so angry. You know, if you shave all the hair off your arse and get into a pair of leather trousers, you're gonna sing an angry song. lt's not gonna be some wistful ballad about that crazy summer in Paris with Justine. lt's going to be much more, "Death in the morning, death for breakfast. Little pots of toasted death." Heavy metal is what happens when a group of people with competitively disgusting appearances come together to try to kill air. No, partly... Partly, that is probably age speaking. l just can’t tolerate certain things, you know."

"Why would anybody want to go skiing? You could sit in the comfort of your own kitchen and break your knees with a hammer. What is the human impulse? What’s wrong with these people? I think it’s because they’re so closeted, their lives are so comfortable, they actually seek out danger as a pastime. If you’re poor, you don’t go and look for danger ‘cause you’re surrounded by it. Your accommodation is dangerous, your neighbours are dangerous. Your own family are pretty handy. You probably have a couple of moves yourself. Your dinner can fucking kill you anyway so you don’t have to go and look for danger."

"Now, The Archers is not a programme I’m hugely familiar with, because every time the theme music comes on, I leap across the kitchen with an athleticism I don’t actually possess, in search of the “fuck off” button on the radio. I gather it’s about some people who are very, very worried about getting the crisps to the fete on time. No wonder everybody's hooked."

"This is from my granny. She was a beautiful, spiritual person. She always used to say: "Doesn't matter how big the fucker is. They all have a neck." Another thing she used to say was: "Never get involved with more than 11 people sexually at one time. You cannot keep everybody happy. Work on the farm deteriorates almost immediately. Don’t do that.""

"It's a totally inhospitable place, you shouldn't be here—the sun—you live about three quarters of a mile from it; I've seen insects walking around with kneepads; you fling yourselves into the sea when you're not actually walking around audibly crackling in the heat. And the sea is full of jellyfish, sharks and other things who hate you, but you persist in living here. So you know, it's a jail you live in. It's lovely, you've done wonderful things with it, but you're all still in denial."

"Hi, how are you today? I'm Tony, I'm going to be your server. I've got some very exciting specials to tell you folks about right here. We've got our deep-pan re-re-fried chocolate ice cream pizza, which comes with a complementary pacemaker. If you're watching your weight you might want to try our No Hope Protein Salad, absolutely delicious. Philippe, our maitre d', will dig out some photographs of you looking kind of tubby, you know, on the Internet, and then we all kind of point and laugh at you and just sort of rub a single chickpea on your lip until you cry. Would you like some water?"

""Shut up, you wretch! I rescued you from the city streets. Without me you'd still be fucking bouncing into buildings out there in the laser neon rain with the tabloids poltergeisting through the air, wondering where the fuck you are, you clueless dolt! I took you in for the waif you were, rescued you from every doorway which was a waiting set of jaws—every half-closed window, a pirate's eye—I took you in and rescued you from your own stupidity! If you had a shred of moral decency, you'd chain yourself to the radiator and devote the rest of your life to acts of sexual abasement!" But you don't say that. You say "Yes, I see what you mean, I see where you're coming from"."

"I apologise for even bringing this up, but it is two thousand and something, whatever it is, and it is still very difficult to have a rational conversation about periods.. to a woman.. when it could be relevant. You see I’m almost instinctively euphemistic about it, I don’t want to get into trouble even here! I only realised recently I’ve been having the same kind of polite conversation all my life, where you say to somebody: “..Hmm?.. You don’t - you don’t want to go to the restaurant, that we said we’d..? No, me neither. And you don’t want to go to the other place I’m about to suggest- me neither! Or any of the places I can think of, I hate them all as well. But listen, the thing is, when we do find somewhere, and I’m sure we will cause you’re starving, I know that, you’ve said it several times; when we get there, I’m actually not that worried about food myself. Main thing for me is, when we get in there, could you run over some of my flaws? Cause you know, I just can’t keep track! I don’t know what it is, if you weren’t here, really I’d be fucked, I really would.” I don’t do that shit anymore. I just say: “Listen, listen.. Are you having your period? Cause you know what, it’s humiliating to argue with a hormone. And I know you’re crying and everything, but you know what, I quite fancy a cry too, I really do. You’ve kind of stolen the show and the waiter’s coming over now but I really would like to cry as well. By the way, crying isn’t proof of a greater capacity to feel, it’s proof of a greater capacity to cry. And I’m not paying for this, fuck you.”"

"You're a wonderful lover."

"I'm waiting 'til they get all this kit in one six by three inch lump of metal and you just stick it up your arse and it does everything for you. You get music all the time, everything's in vivid colour, your taste and all your hearing is enhanced, and you never have to do anything ever again. You can stay in bed and just live in this vortex of sensation."

"(after coughing) ...and then you cough and die."

"(after coughing) I have... something. It'll clear up. Might take me with it, but we'll see."

"(after coughing) Excuse me. I have a touch of everything."

"I fear we might be losing the basic human facility to be alone - and with that you throw out independent decision-making, what to trust, what not to trust, key stuff, a perilous loss."

"His death which happened in his berth, At forty-odd befell: They went and told the sexton, and The sexton tolled the bell."

"I remember, I remember The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon Nor brought too long a day; But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away."

"I remember, I remember The fir-trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from Heaven Than when I was a boy."

"And there is ev'n a happiness That makes the heart afraid!"

"There's not a string attuned to mirth But has its chord in melancholy."

"But evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart."

"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To silence."

"Straight down the Crooked Lane, And all round the Square."

"Never go to France Unless you know the lingo, If you do, like me, You will repent, by jingo."

"For my part, getting up seems not so easy By half as lying."

"A man that's fond precociously of stirring, Must be a spoon."

"No sun—no moon—no morn—no noon, No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day, No warmth—no cheerfulness—no healthful ease, No road, no street, no t' other side the way, No comfortable feel in any member— No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, November!"

"Seem'd washing his hands with invisible soap In imperceptible water."

"Oh bed! oh bed! delicious bed! That heaven upon earth to the weary head."

"He lies like a hedgehog rolled up the wrong way, Tormenting himself with his prickles."

"One more Unfortunate, Weary of breath, Rashly importunate, Gone to her death! Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care; Fashion'd so slenderly Young, and so fair!"

"Alas! for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun!"

"Even God's providence Seeming estranged."

"What joy have I in June's return? My feet are parched—my eyeballs burn, I scent no flowery gust; But faint the flagging Zephyr springs, With dry Macadam on its wings, And turns me "dust to dust.""

"With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread— Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the “Song of the Shirt.”"

"Sewing at once a double thread, A shroud as well as a shirt."

"No blessed leisure for love or hope, But only time for grief."

"My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread."

"Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof! And work—work—work, Till the stars shine through the roof!"

"Oh, Men, with Sisters dear! Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives!"

"Oh, God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!"

"'Twas in the prime of summer-time An evening calm and cool, And four-and-twenty happy boys Came bounding out of school: There were some that ran and some that leapt, Like troutlets in a pool."

"And lo! the universal air Seemed lit with ghastly flame; Ten thousand thousand dreadful eyes Were looking down in blame."

"My head was like an ardent coal, My heart as solid ice; My wretched, wretched soul, I knew, Was at the Devil's price: A dozen times I groaned: the dead Had never groaned but twice!"

"That very night while gentle sleep The urchin's eyelids kissed, Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walked between, With gyves upon his wrist."

"There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be,— In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea, Or in the wide desert where no life is found."

"We watched her breathing through the night, Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro."

"Our very hopes belied our fears, Our fears our hopes belied; We thought her dying when she slept, And sleeping when she died."

"She stood breast-high amid the corn Clasped by the golden light of morn, Like the sweetheart of the sun, Who many a glowing kiss had won."

"Thus she stood amid the stooks, Praising God with sweetest looks."

"When he is forsaken, Withered and shaken, What can an old man do but die?"

"Oh would I were dead now, Or up in my bed now, To cover my head now, And have a good cry!"

"There's a double beauty whenever a swan Swims on a lake with her double thereon."

"Home-made dishes that drive one from home."

"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold."

"Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old To the very verge of the churchyard mould."

"How widely its agencies vary,— To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,— As even its minted coins express, Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess, And now of a Bloody Mary."

"Another tumble! That's his precious nose!"

"Boughs are daily rifled By the gusty thieves, And the book of Nature Getteth short of leaves."

"A wife who preaches in her gown, And lectures in her night-dress."

"Peace and rest at length have come All the day's long toil is past, And each heart is whispering, "Home, Home at last.""

"Ben Battle was a soldier bold, And used to war's alarms; But a cannon-ball took off his legs, So he laid down his arms."

"Pity it is to slay the meanest thing."

"No solemn sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious; Nor study in my sanctum supercilious, To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull."

"Each cloud-capt mountain is a holy altar; An organ breathes in every grove; And the full heart 's a Psalter, Rich in deep hymn of gratitude and love."

"'Tis strange how like a very dunce, Man, with his bumps upon his sconce, Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge he Has had, till lately, of Phrenology— A science that by simple dint of Head-combing he should find a hint of, When scratching o'er those little pole-hills The faculties throw up like mole hills."

"The things we liked most of course were the things that more or less selected or symbolized our own feelings of conditions and life in general. For example, I recall that we liked Thomas Hood's "The Sound of the ship" Now, nothing could come closer to the way we felt than that particular poem. We also read and managed an interest in that other one, "The Bridge of Sighs" also by Thomas Hood. Later, we found "The Masque of Anarchy" by Shelley, and of course in addition to that there were the Jewish poets, like Rosenfeld and Edelshtat. They were magnificent in their writing, in their poetry depicting the life of the people in the shop."

"It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar."

"There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is always wrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the clock that is always right — except when you rely upon it, and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilized country."

"There are the goods; if you want them, you can have them. If you do not want them, they would almost rather that you did not come and talk about them."

"Nothing—so it seems to me...is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. … The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of—of things longer."

"I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house."

"It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen."

"I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed."

"Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. Also like the measles, we take it only once...No, we never sicken with love twice. Cupid spends no second arrow on the same heart."

"A boy's love comes from a full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach. Indeed, a man's sluggish current may not be called love, compared with the rushing fountain that wells up when a boy's heart is struck with the heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves."

"Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us. How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep! Oh! those hideous nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain, when we lie, like living men among the dead, staring out into the dark hours that drift so slowly between us and the light. And oh! those still more hideous nights when we sit by another in pain, when the low fire startles us every now and then with a falling cinder, and the tick of the clock seems a hammer beating out the life that we are watching."

"When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head—the other man's head, I mean—then that proved that his—the first fellow's—girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke his head—not his own, you know, but the other fellow's—the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who—well, if he broke his head, then his girl—not the other fellow's, but the fellow who was the—Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl was a pretty girl; but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl, but B's girl was. That was their method of conducting art criticism."

"Love is too pure a light to burn long among the noisome gases that we breathe, but before it is choked out we may use it as a torch to ignite the cozy fire of affection."

"I am afraid, dear Edwin and Angelina, you expect too much from love. You think there is enough of your little hearts to feed this fierce, devouring passion for all your long lives. Ah, young folk! don't rely too much upon that unsteady flicker. It will dwindle and dwindle as the months roll on, and there is no replenishing the fuel. You will watch it die out in anger and disappointment. To each it will seem that it is the other who is growing colder. Edwin sees with bitterness that Angelina no longer runs to the gate to meet him, all smiles and blushes; and when he has a cough now she doesn't begin to cry and, putting her arms round his neck, say that she cannot live without him. The most she will probably do is to suggest a lozenge, and even that in a tone implying that it is the noise more than anything else she is anxious to get rid of."

"Poor little Angelina, too, sheds silent tears, for Edwin has given up carrying her old handkerchief in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. Both are astonished at the falling off in the other one, but neither sees their own change. If they did they would not suffer as they do. They would look for the cause in the right quarter—in the littleness of poor human nature—join hands over their common failing, and start building their house anew on a more earthly and enduring foundation. But we are so blind to our own shortcomings, so wide awake to those of others. Everything that happens to us is always the other person's fault. Angelina would have gone on loving Edwin forever and ever and ever if only Edwin had not grown so strange and different. Edwin would have adored Angelina through eternity if Angelina had only remained the same as when he first adored her. It is a cheerless hour for you both when the lamp of love has gone out and the fire of affection is not yet lit, and you have to grope about in the cold, raw dawn of life to kindle it. God grant it catches light before the day is too far spent. Many sit shivering by the dead coals till night come."

"We do not hate, nor grieve, nor joy, nor despair in our thirties like we did in our teens. Disappointment does not suggest suicide, and we quaff success without intoxication."

"We take all things in a minor key as we grow older. There are few majestic passages in the later acts of life's opera. Ambition takes a less ambitious aim. Honor becomes more reasonable and conveniently adapts itself to circumstances. And love—love dies. "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" soon creeps like a killing frost upon our hearts. The tender shoots and the expanding flowers are nipped and withered, and of a vine that yearned to stretch its tendrils round the world there is left but a sapless stump"

"It is well, dear ladies, for us old sinners that you study only books. Did you read mankind, you would know that the lad's shy stammering tells a truer tale than our bold eloquence. A boy's love comes from a full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach. Indeed, a man's sluggish current may not be called love, compared with the rushing fountain that wells up when a boy's heart is struck with the heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves."

"And how madly we did worship! And how sweet it was to worship! Ah, lad, cherish love's young dream while it lasts! You will know too soon how truly little Tom Moore sang when he said that there was nothing half so sweet in life. Even when it brings misery it is a wild, romantic misery, all unlike the dull, worldly pain of after-sorrows. When you have lost her—when the light is gone out from your life and the world stretches before you a long, dark horror, even then a half-enchantment mingles with your despair."

"And who would not risk its terrors to gain its raptures? Ah, what raptures they were! The mere recollection thrills you. How delicious it was to tell her that you loved her, that you lived for her, that you would die for her! How you did rave, to be sure, what floods of extravagant nonsense you poured forth, and oh, how cruel it was of her to pretend not to believe you! In what awe you stood of her! How miserable you were when you had offended her! And yet, how pleasant to be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having the slightest notion of what your fault was! How dark the world was when she snubbed you, as she often did, the little rogue, just to see you look wretched; how sunny when she smiled! How jealous you were of every one about her! How you hated every man she shook hands with, every woman she kissed—the maid that did her hair, the boy that cleaned her shoes, the dog she nursed—though you had to be respectful to the last-named! How you looked forward to seeing her, how stupid you were when you did see her, staring at her without saying a word! How impossible it was for you to go out at any time of the day or night without finding yourself eventually opposite her windows!"

"Tears are as sweet as laughter to some natures."

"A solemn sadness reigns. A great peace is around us. In its light our cares of the working day grow small and trivial, and bread and cheese—ay, and even kisses—do not seem the only things worth striving for. Thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood in upon us, and standing in the stillness under earth's darkening dome, we feel that we are greater than our petty lives. Hung round with those dusky curtains, the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop, but a stately temple wherein man may worship, and where at times in the dimness his groping hands touch God's."

"No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty—to the poor. It is hell upon earth to a sensitive man; and many a brave gentleman who would have faced the labors of Hercules has had his heart broken by its petty miseries."

"It is not the actual discomforts themselves that are hard to bear. Who would mind roughing it a bit if that were all it meant? What cared Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers? Did he wear trousers? I forget; or did he go about as he does in the pantomimes? What did it matter to him if his toes did stick out of his boots? and what if his umbrella was a cotton one, so long as it kept the rain off? His shabbiness did not trouble him; there was none of his friends round about to sneer him. Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting."

"I don't believe any man ever existed without vanity, and if he did he would be an extremely uncomfortable person to have anything to do with. He would, of course, be a very good man, and we should respect him very much. He would be a very admirable man—a man to be put under a glass case and shown round as a specimen—a man to be stuck upon a pedestal and copied, like a school exercise—a man to be reverenced, but not a man to be loved, not a human brother whose hand we should care to grip. Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their way, but we, poor mortals, in our present state, would probably find them precious slow company. Even mere good people are rather depressing. It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one."

"There have been a good many funny things said and written about hardupishness, but the reality is not funny, for all that. It is not funny to have to haggle over pennies. It isn't funny to be thought mean and stingy. It isn't funny to be shabby and to be ashamed of your address. No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty — to the poor."

"It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It is a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over."

"All is vanity and everybody's vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men — more so, if possible."

"It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one."

"There are various ways of flattering, and, of course, you must adapt your style to your subject. Some people like it laid on with a trowel, and this requires very little art. With sensible persons, however, it needs to be done very delicately, and more by suggestion than actual words. A good many like it wrapped up in the form of an insult, as—"Oh, you are a perfect fool, you are. You would give your last sixpence to the first hungry-looking beggar you met;" while others will swallow it only when administered through the medium of a third person, so that if C wishes to get at an A of this sort, he must confide to A's particular friend B that he thinks A a splendid fellow, and beg him, B, not to mention it, especially to A. Be careful that B is a reliable man, though, otherwise he won't."

"And fighting the battle of life is fighting against fearful odds, too. There are giants and dragons in this nineteenth century, and the golden casket that they guard is not so easy to win as it appears in the story-books."

"A woman never thoroughly cares for her lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you have snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel that she begins to smile upon you."

"Ambitious people are the leaven which raises it into wholesome bread. Without ambitious people the world would never get up. They are busybodies who are about early in the morning, hammering, shouting, and rattling the fire-irons, and rendering it generally impossible for the rest of the house to remain in bed."

"It seems so sad to see the little dirt-grimed brats try to play in the noisy courts and muddy streets. Poor little uncared-for, unwanted human atoms, they are not children. Children are bright-eyed, chubby, and shy. These are dingy, screeching elves, their tiny faces seared and withered, their baby laughter cracked and hoarse."

"Look even at Pussy Sobersides, with her dull, sleepy glance, her grave, slow walk, and dignified, prudish airs; who could ever think that once she was the blue-eyed, whirling, scampering, head-over-heels, mad little firework that we call a kitten? What marvelous vitality a kitten has. It is really something very beautiful the way life bubbles over in the little creatures. They rush about, and mew, and spring; dance on their hind legs, embrace everything with their front ones, roll over and over, lie on their backs and kick. They don't know what to do with themselves, they are so full of life."

"All great literary men are shy. I am myself, though I am told it is hardly noticeable. I am glad it is not. It used to be extremely prominent at one time, and was the cause of much misery to myself and discomfort to every one about me—my lady friends especially complained most bitterly about it. A shy man's lot is not a happy one. The men dislike him, the women despise him, and he dislikes and despises himself. Use brings him no relief, and there is no cure for him except time."

"A poor gasping, blushing creature, with trembling knees and twitching hands, is a painful sight to every one, and if it cannot cure itself, the sooner it goes and hangs itself the better."

"A man rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period. Even if his own inward strength does not throw it off, the rubbings of the world generally smooth it down."

"The point where he does resemble his ideal is in his faithfulness. I am fully prepared to allow the shy young man that virtue: he is constant in his love. But the reason is not far to seek. The fact is it exhausts all his stock of courage to look one woman in the face, and it would be simply impossible for him to go through the ordeal with a second. He stands in far too much dread of the whole female sex to want to go gadding about with many of them. One is quite enough for him."

"Foolish people—when I say "foolish people" in this contemptuous way I mean people who entertain different opinions to mine. If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do—foolish people, I say, then, who have never experienced much of either, will tell you that mental distress is far more agonizing than bodily. Romantic and touching theory! so comforting to the love-sick young sprig who looks down patronizingly at some poor devil with a white starved face and thinks to himself, "Ah, how happy you are compared with me!"—so soothing to fat old gentlemen who cackle about the superiority of poverty over riches. But it is all nonsense—all cant. An aching head soon makes one forget an aching heart. A broken finger will drive away all recollections of an empty chair. And when a man feels really hungry he does not feel anything else."

"I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!"

"If all the wisdom of the world and all its art—all the spoils that it has won from nature, all the fire that it has snatched from heaven—were gathered together and divided into heaps, and we could point and say, for instance, these mighty truths were flashed forth in the brilliant salon amid the ripple of light laughter and the sparkle of bright eyes; and this deep knowledge was dug up in the quiet study, where the bust of Pallas looks serenely down on the leather-scented shelves; and this heap belongs to the crowded street; and that to the daisied field—the heap that would tower up high above the rest as a mountain above hills would be the one at which we should look up and say: this noblest pile of all—these glorious paintings and this wondrous music, these trumpet words, these solemn thoughts, these daring deeds, they were forged and fashioned amid misery and pain in the sordid squalor of the city garret. There, from their eyries, while the world heaved and throbbed below, the kings of men sent forth their eagle thoughts to wing their flight through the ages. There, where the sunlight streaming through the broken panes fell on rotting boards and crumbling walls; there, from their lofty thrones, those rag-clothed Joves have hurled their thunderbolts and shaken, before now, the earth to its foundations."

"You can lock the door upon them, but they burst open their shaky lattices and call out over the house-tops so that men cannot but hear. You hounded wild Rousseau into the meanest garret of the Rue St. Jacques and jeered at his angry shrieks. But the thin, piping tones swelled a hundred years later into the sullen roar of the French Revolution, and civilization to this day is quivering to the reverberations of his voice."

"Yet there is no gainsaying but that it must have been somewhat sweeter in that dewy morning of creation, when it was young and fresh, when the feet of the tramping millions had not trodden its grass to dust, nor the din of the myriad cities chased the silence forever away. Life must have been noble and solemn to those free-footed, loose-robed fathers of the human race, walking hand in hand with God under the great sky. They lived in sunkissed tents amid the lowing herds. They took their simple wants from the loving hand of Nature. They toiled and talked and thought; and the great earth rolled around in stillness, not yet laden with trouble and wrong. Those days are past now. The quiet childhood of Humanity, spent in the far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers, is gone forever; and human life is deepening down to manhood amid tumult, doubt, and hope. Its age of restful peace is past. It has its work to finish and must hasten on. What that work may be—what this world's share is in the great design—we know not, though our unconscious hands are helping to accomplish it. Like the tiny coral insect working deep under the dark waters, we strive and struggle each for our own little ends, nor dream of the vast fabric we are building up for God."

"We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the Universe."

"Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before. I have not a word to say against contented people so long as they keep quiet."

"It always is wretched weather according to us. The weather is like the government — always in the wrong. In summer-time we say it is stifling; in winter that it is killing; in spring and autumn we find fault with it for being neither one thing nor the other and wish it would make up its mind...We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself."

"Swearing relieves the feelings—that is what swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer with her. She said I had no business to have such feelings."

"Conceit is the finest armor that a man can wear. Upon its smooth, impenetrable surface the puny dagger-thrusts of spite and envy glance harmlessly aside. Without that breast-plate the sword of talent cannot force its way through the battle of life, for blows have to be borne as well as dealt."

"There are various methods by which you may achieve ignominy and shame. By murdering a large and respected family in cold blood and afterward depositing their bodies in the water companies' reservoir, you will gain much unpopularity in the neighborhood of your crime, and even robbing a church will get you cordially disliked, especially by the vicar. But if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it.""

"Foolish people — when I say "foolish people" in this contemptuous way I mean people who entertain different opinions to mine. If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do."

"They say — people who ought to be ashamed of themselves do — that the consciousness of being well dressed imparts a blissfulness to the human heart that religion is powerless to bestow. I am afraid these cynical persons are sometimes correct."

"That is just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us is complete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. I remember tumbling into a huge dust-hole when a very small boy, but I have not the faintest recollection of ever getting out again; and if memory were all we had to trust to, I should be compelled to believe I was there still."

"We drink one another's health and spoil our own."

"It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form."

"Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing."

"No, what was sad in his case was that he, who didn’t care for carved oak, should have his drawing-room panelled with it, while people who do care for it have to pay enormous prices to get it. It seems to be the rule of this world. Each person has what he doesn’t want, and other people have what he does want."

"It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions."

"It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart."

"What between tipping the man who had brought us home, and paying for the broken sculls, and for having been out four hours and a half, it cost us a pretty considerable number of weeks’ pocket-money, that sail. But we learned experience, and they say that is always cheap at any price."

"Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature."

"The most extraordinary dream I ever had was one in which I fancied that, as I was going into a theater, the cloak-room attendant stopped me in the lobby and insisted on my leaving my legs behind me."

"I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I was not at all surprised about it. Nobody was. My relations came to see me off, I thought, and to wish me "Good-by!" They all came, and were all very pleasant; but they were not in the least astonished—not one of them. Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy as one of the most-naturally-to-be-expected things in the world."

"It is only in sleep that true imagination ever stirs within us. Awake, we never imagine anything; we merely alter, vary, or transpose. We give another twist to the kaleidoscope of the things we see around us, and obtain another pattern; but not one of us has ever added one tiniest piece of new glass to the toy."

"Too much of anything is a mistake, as the man said when his wife presented him with four new healthy children in one day. We should practice moderation in all matters."

"Human thought is not a firework, ever shooting off fresh forms and shapes as it burns; it is a tree, growing very slowly — you can watch it long and see no movement — very silently, unnoticed. It was planted in the world many thousand years ago, a tiny, sickly plant. And men guarded it and tended it, and gave up life and fame to aid its growth. In the hot days of their youth, they came to the gate of the garden and knocked, begging to be let in, and to be counted among the gardeners. And their young companions without called to them to come back, and play the man with bow and spear, and win sweet smiles from rosy lips, and take their part amid the feast, and dance, not stoop with wrinkled brows, at weaklings' work. And the passers by mocked them and called shame, and others cried out to stone them. And still they stayed there laboring, that the tree might grow a little, and they died and were forgotten. And the tree grew fair and strong. The storms of ignorance passed over it, and harmed it not. The fierce fires of superstition soared around it; but men leaped into the flames and beat them back, perishing, and the tree grew. With the sweat of their brow have men nourished its green leaves. Their tears have moistened the earth about it. With their blood they have watered its roots. The seasons have come and passed, and the tree has grown and flourished. And its branches have spread far and high, and ever fresh shoots are bursting forth, and ever new leaves unfolding to the light. But they are all part of the one tree — the tree that was planted on the first birthday of the human race. The stem that bears them springs from the gnarled old trunk that was green and soft when white-haired Time was a little child; the sap that feeds them is drawn up through the roots that twine and twist about the bones of the ages that are dead."

"The human mind can no more produce an original thought than a tree can bear an original fruit. As well might one cry for an original note in music as expect an original idea from a human brain. One wishes our friends, the critics, would grasp this simple truth, and leave off clamoring for the impossible, and being shocked because they do not get it."

"How dull, how impossible life would be without dreams — waking dreams, I mean — the dreams that we call "castles in the air," built by the kindly hands of Hope! Were it not for the mirage of the oasis, drawing his footsteps ever onward, the weary traveler would lie down in the desert sand and die. It is the mirage of distant success, of happiness that, like the bunch of carrots fastened an inch beyond the donkey's nose, seems always just within our reach, if only we will gallop fast enough, that makes us run so eagerly along the road of Life."

"in the unliterary grammar of life, where the future tense stands first, and the past is formed, not from the indefinite, but from the present indicative, "to have been" is "to be"."

"Once we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life."

"The court had to be cleared owing to the roars of ribald laughter which greeted the appearance in the witness-box of the twelve red bearded dwarfs all in a heap. Their names were read out amid growing uproar. The names appeared to be: Sophus Barkayo-Tong, Amaninter Axling, Farjole Merrybody, Guttergorm Guttergormpton, Badly Oronparser, Churm Rincewind, Cleveland Zackhouse, Molonay Tubilderborst, Edeledel Edel, Scorpion de Rooftrouser, Listenis Youghaupt, Frums Gillygottle."

"Money talks, and we are always listening. (Dr. Smart-Allick, in Frayn, The Best of Beachcomber, p 199)"

"If I don't marry her, I won't marry anyone - at least, hardly anyone. (Captain Foulenough: Frayn, The Best of Beachcomber, p 100)"

"SIXTY HORSES WEDGED IN CHIMNEY The story to fit this sensational headline has not turned up yet. (Frayn, The Best of Beachcomber, p 173)"

"Erratum. In my article on the price of milk, "Horses" should have read "Cows" throughout. (Sideways through Borneo, p 202)"

"HEROISM UNDER TORTURE. It is being said of a certain poet that though he tortures the English language, he has never yet succeeded in forcing it to reveal his meaning. (Frayn, The Best of Beachcomber, p 113)"

"TAILPIECE. One disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear. (Frayn, The Best of Beachcomber, p 57)"

"Justice must not only be seen to be done. It must be seen to be believed."

"The Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards of us all."

"Most women are not so young as they are painted."

"To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine."

"I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable."

"The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner."

"As a teacher, as a propagandist, Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal."

"The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends."

"Lift latch, step in, be welcome, Sir, Albeit to see you I’m unglad."

"Only the insane take themselves quite seriously."

"There is much virtue in a window. It is to a human being as a frame is to a painting, as a proscenium to a play, as 'form' to literature. It strongly defines its content."

"Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint."

"She was a young person whose reveries never were in retrospect. For her past was no treasury of distinct memories, all hoarded and classified, some brighter than others and more highly valued. All memories were for her but as the motes in one fused radiance that followed her and made more luminous the pathway of her future."

"He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else."

"For a young man, sleep is a sure solvent of distress. There whirls not for him in the night any so hideous phantasmagoria as will not become, in the clarity of the next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead. Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to him, and he sees nothing dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun’s bright message to him, and "Why not indeed?" his answer.”"

"The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end."

"One has never known a good man to whom dogs were not dear; but many of the best women have no such fondness. You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes — possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her."

"He heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself."

"Oxford walls have a way of belittling us; and the Duke was loath to regard his doom as trivial. Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic."

"Death cancels all engagements."

"It is so much easier to covet what one hasn’t than to revel in what one has. Also, it is so much easier to be enthusiastic about what exists than about what doesn’t."

"She was one of those people who say "I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like.""

"You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a whole flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilization. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost —- he becomes a unit in unreason."

"A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought."

"Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful."

"Just as "pluck" comes of breeding, so is endurance especially an attribute of the artist. Because he can stand outside himself, and (if there be nothing ignoble in them) take pleasure in his own sufferings, the artist has a huge advantage over you and me."

"The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play."

"Everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example."

"All fantasy should have a solid base in reality."

"I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him."

"No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt."

"In every human being one or the other of these two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the negative or passive instinct to accept it. And either of these instincts is so significant of character that one might as well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests."

"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased — short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed."

"Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter."

"It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait."

"To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself."

"Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up."

"How might one describe Max Beerbohm to someone who knows nothing about him? Well, for a start, one might imagine D.H. Lawrence. Picture the shagginess of Lawrence, his thick beard, his rough-cut clothes, his disdain for all the social and physical niceties. Recall his passionateness—his passion, so to say, for passion itself—his darkness, his gloom. Think back to his appeal to the primary instincts, his personal messianism, his refusal to deal with anything smaller than capital “D” Destiny. Do not neglect his humorlessness, his distaste for all that otherwise passed for being civilized, his blood theories and manifold roiling hatreds. Have you, then, D.H. Lawrence firmly in mind? Splendid. Now reverse all of Lawrence’s qualities and you will have a fair beginning notion of Max Beerbohm, who, after allowing that Lawrence was a man of “unquestionable genius,” felt it necessary to add, “he never realized, don’t you know—he never suspected that to be stark, staring mad is somewhat of a handicap to a writer.”"

"After his very early days, when he gambolled with an ornate and consciously absurd vocabulary, he wrote supremely well. His essay on Venice, originally an article in the Daily Mail, is a model not only of imaginative observation but of variety of structure. It is, I believe, the best travel sketch ever written."

"I felt, when I was listening to them, that I was listening to the voice of the last civilized man on earth. Max's broadcasts justify the entire invention of broadcasting."

"But what did Mr. Beerbohm give to the essay and what did he take from it? That is a much more complicated question, for here we have an essayist who has concentrated on the work and is without doubt the prince of his profession."

"If you knew how I had pored over many essays – how they fill me with marvel – how I can't conceive what it would be like to write as you do! – This is sober truth: – but I shan't attempt to say how much pleasure your letter gave me."

"It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops."

"When struck by a thunderbolt it is unnecessary to consult the Book of Dates as to the precise meaning of the omen."

"Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet."

"When Ling was communicating to any person the signs by which messengers might find him, he was compelled to add, "the neighbourhood in which this contemptible person resides is that officially known as 'the mean quarter favoured by the lower class of those who murder by treachery'," and for this reason he was not always treated with the regard to which his attainments entitled him, or which he would have unquestionably received had he been able to describe himself as of "the partly-drained and uninfected area reserved to Mandarins and their friends.""

"Before hastening to secure a possible reward of five taels by dragging an unobservant person away from a falling building, examine well his features lest you find, when too late, that it is one to whom you are indebted for double that amount."

"In his countenance this person read an expression of no-encouragement towards his venture."

"Should a person on returning from the city discover his house to be in flames, let him examine well the change which he has received from the chair-carrier before it is too late; for evil never travels alone."

"At the mention of the name and offence of this degraded being a great sound went up from the entire multitude – a universal cry of execration, not greatly dissimilar from that which may be frequently heard in the crowded Temple of Impartiality when the one whose duty it is to take up, at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery."

"Alas! It is well written, "The road to eminence lies through the cheap and exceedingly uninviting eating-houses.""

"At this display the elder and less attractive of the maidens fled, uttering loud and continuous cries of apprehension in order to conceal the direction of her flight."

"It is well said: 'He who lacks a single tael sees many bargains,'" replied Sun Wei, a refined bitterness weighing the import of his words. "Truly this person's friends in the Upper Air are a never-failing lantern behind his back."

"Do not adjust your sandals while passing through a melon-field, nor yet arrange your hat beneath an orange-tree."

"After secretly observing the unstudied grace of her movements, the most celebrated picture-maker of the province burned the implements of his craft, and began life anew as a trainer of performing elephants."

"The one-legged never stumble."

"There are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold, or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice upon a dark night."

"However entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?"

"One learns to itch where one can scratch."

"However deep you dig a well it affords no refuge in the time of flood."

"Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings,"how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?" "For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye."

"He who has failed three times sets up as an instructor."

"He is capable of any crime, from reviling the Classics to diverting water courses."

"Eat in the dark the bargain that you purchased in the dusk."

"One may ride upon a tiger's back but it is fatal to dismount."

"Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark's fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider."

"When an alluring woman comes in at the door," warningly traced the austere Kien-fi on the margin of his well-known essay, "discretion may be found up the chimney". It is incredible that beneath this ever-timely reminder an obscure disciple should have added the words: "The wiser the sage, the more profound the folly."

"Ernest Bramah's China, then, is the fantastic bogus China of convention, not the real historical thing at all. He wrote of it in a prose so perfectly conceived that it becomes a miracle of style. As Hilaire Belloc once observed, the sly humor and philosophy of Bramah's stories is a trick he achieves by pretending to adapt the flavor of Chinese literary conventions into the English. But the thing I love most about the tales is their irony and the brilliance of their wit."

"Bramah's books fall into two very unequal categories. Some, fortunately the smaller part, record the adventures of the blind detective, Max Carrados. These are competent, mediocre books. The rest are parodic in nature: they pass themselves off as translations from the Chinese, and their boundless perfection achieved the unconditional praise of Hilaire Belloc in 1922. Their names: The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900), Kai Lung's Golden Hours (1922), Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928), The Mirror of Kong Ho (1931), The Moon of Much Gladness (1936)."

"The theory and practice of gamesmanship; or, The art of winning games without actually cheating."

"There are those who believe that the sole duty of the poker gamesman is to build up his reputation for impenetrability and toughness by suggesting that he last played poker by the light of a moon made more brilliant by the snows of the Yukon, and that his opponents were two white slave traffickers, a ticket-of-leave man and a deserter from the Foreign Legion. To me this is ridiculously far-fetched, but I do believe that a trace of American accent – West Coast – casts a small shadow of apprehension over the minds of English players."

"In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me."

"How to be one up - how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly."

""Yes, but not in the South", with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person."

"A good general rule is to state that the bouquet is better than the taste, and vice versa."

"Talk of the "imperial decay" of your invalid port. "Its gracious withdrawal from perfection, keeping a hint of former majesty withal, as it hovers between oblivion and the divine Untergang of infinite recession.""

"Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madames, greeting the punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs and then pimping their books."

"What makes a date so dreadful is the weight of expectation attached to it. There is every chance that you may meet your soulmate, get married, have children and be buried side by side. There is an equal chance that the person you meet will look as if they’ve already been buried for some time."

"Men love women because they are the loveliest things on God's earth. Women love men because chocolate can't mow the lawn. Some men prefer to love other men. Equally, some women prefer to love other women. There is a word to describe this kind of behaviour. Love."

"People who get to the top of any organisation are generally dysfunctional human beings who are overachieving, overcompensating or overbearing."

"Never work for a company that says people are its most important asset. If you wanted to get a mortgage and you said that your only asset was people you would end up living in a tent."

"In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, I know one boy who won't be sweating. I intend to raise my coffin-lid briskly, throw a few things into an overnight bag, and, whistling something appropriate, prepare to meet my Maker."

"Disneyworld ... is a historical reconstruction as sanitised as the Kremlin's, and a future vision as uncognisant of contemporary pointers as Peter Pan's. It is a magic carpet under which everything has been swept."

"Does not even the most sexually democratic of us, among which number I unquestionably count myself, not choke back the tiniest sob at the sight of poor old Denis [Thatcher] stumbling along behind, struggling pitifully to hold his trilby on, as the PM strides across Goose Green with the wind managing only to make her hair look more [[Medusa|Medusan, and the very mines praying she will not crush them under-heel?"

"A long, soft sigh, one of those very Italian sighs that express so much, that say "Ah, signor, if only this world were an ideal world, what would I not give to be able to do as you ask, we should sit together in the Tuscan sunshine, you and I, just two men together, and we should drink a bottle of the good red wine, and we should sing, ah, how we should sing.""

"The word "souvenir" has, of course, slightly extended itself in meaning until it now denotes almost anything either breakable or useless; but even today, ninety per cent of the items covered by the word are forgettable objects in which cigarettes can be left to go stale."

"Since Switzerland has nothing else to identify it…and since both its national products, snow and chocolate, melt, the cuckoo clock was invented solely in order to give tourists something solid to remember it by."

"Having lost the last war, they are currently enjoying a Wirtschaftswunder, which can be briefly translated as "The best way to own a Mercedes is to build one.""

"Ethnically, the Germans are Teutonic...being made up of Vandals, Gepidae, and Goths, all of whom emigrated - south from Sweden in about 500 BC; why they emigrated is not exactly clear, but many scholars believe it was because they saw the way Sweden was going, i.e. neutral."

"Strictly speaking, the land does not exist; it is merely dehydrated sea."

"Apart from cheese and tulips, the main product of the country is advocaat, a drink made from lawyers."

"I rang room service, and asked for a bottle of Perrier, because while I was asleep someone had come in and carpeted my throat."

"The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world."

"What, still alive at twenty-two, A clean upstanding chap like you?What still alive at twenty-two, Sure, if your throat ’tis hard to slit, Slit your girl’s, and swing for it."

"Like enough, you won't be glad, When they come to hang you, lad: But bacon's not the only thing That's cured by hanging from a string."

"'Tis Summer Time on Bredon, And now the farmers swear: The cattle rise and listen In valleys far and near, And blush at what they hear.But when the mists in autumn On Bredon top are thick, And happy hymns of farmers Go up from fold and rick, The cattle then are sick."

"Society is based on the assumption that everyone is alike and that no one is alive."

"Most of the avoidable suffering in life springs from our attempts to escape the unavoidable suffering inherent in the fragmentary nature of our present existence. We expect immortal satisfactions from mortal conditions, and lasting and perfect happiness in the midst of universal change. To encourage this expectation, to persuade mankind that the ideal is realizable in this world, after a few preliminary changes in external conditions, is the distinguishing mark of all charlatans, whether in thought or action."

"Every false philosophy is an imagination of a world propitious to irrational demands and unregulated desires. The false philosopher's dream infects someone in closer touch than himself with everyday experience, this agent of his desire seeks to translate the dream into reality, and disaster follows. It is the Cinderella story in actual life. Rousseau was Robespierre's fairy godmother, Karl Marx was Lenin's, Nietzsche was Hitler's."

"There are dons who care for the intellect and the imagination, and there are priests who care for the spirit; but broadly speaking the function of universities and churches alike is to trim and tame enthusiasm, to suppress curiosity, and, in short, to whittle immortal souls into serviceable props of the established order."

"Charity may cover a multitude of sins, but success transmutes them into virtues."

"Writers are idolized not because they love their fellow men, which is never a recommendation and in extreme instances leads to crucifixion, but because their self-love is in tune with current fears and desires, and in giving it expression they are speaking for an inarticulate multitude."

"The public mind [is] a cloudy region where only the simplest shapes are discerned with any accuracy."

"Hamlet is every man's self-love with all its dreams realized. He wears all the crowns and carries every cross."

"Hamlet is egotism as it appears to itself, and Don Quixote is egotism as it appears to the detached observer."

"Ideas get substance and value not by being discussed but by being lived."

"Behind the big names of twentieth-century literature there stands a shadow cabinet of writers waiting to take over once the Wind of Change has blown. My own vote goes to Hugh Kingsmill as leader of this opposition."

"I saw that my witticism was unperceived and quietly replaced it in the treasury of my mind."

"Do you know what I am going to tell you, he said with his wry mouth, a pint of plain is your only man."

"One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings."

"Descartes spent far too much time in bed subject to the persistent hallucination that he was thinking. You are not free from a similar disorder."

"After a time," said old Mathers disregarding me, "I mercifully perceived the errors of my ways and the unhappy destination I would reach unless I mended them. I retired from the world in order to try to comprehend it and to find out why it becomes more unsavoury as the years accumulate on a man's body. What do you think I discovered at the end of my meditations?"

"Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable."

"I am completely half afraid to think."

"I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a lump of incommunicable poignancy swelled tragically in my throat. I began to feel intensely every fragment of my equal humanity. The life that was bubbling at the end of my fingers was real and nearly painful in intensity and so was the beauty of my warm face and the loose humanity of my limbs and the racy health of my red rich blood. To leave it all without good reason and to smash the little empire into small fragments was a thing too pitiful even to refuse to think about."

"Is it life?" he answered, "I would rather be without it," he said, "for there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon."

"My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings."

"Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places."

"The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles."

""When things go wrong and will not come right,"

""Who is Fox?", I asked."

"You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?"

"You told me what the first rule of wisdom is," I said. "What is the second rule?" "That can be answered," he said. "There are five in all. Always ask any questions that are to be asked and never answer any. Turn everything you hear to your own advantage. Always carry a repair outfit. Take left turns as much as possible. Never apply your front brake first...If you follow them," said the Sergeant, "you will save your soul and you will never get a fall on a slippy road."

"Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand."

"It cannot be too often repeated that I am not for sale. I was bought in 1921 and the transaction was final and conclusive."

"If Irish were to die completely, the standard of English here, both in the spoken and written word, would sink to a level probably as low as that obtaining in England and it would stop there only because it could go no lower."

"Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country."

"Often in the theatre I can hardly hear myself talking or assuring my doxy that so-and-so is the same fellow that played so-and-so in so-and-so, he's very good, he's a civil servant in the Department of Agriculture, I met a sister of his in Skerries, and so on. Actors should conduct themselves like the rest of us and practise the unobtrusive intonation of the gentleman."

"Some savage faculty for observation told him that most respectable and estimable people usually had a lot of books in their houses."

"Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill."

"The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at a crossroads."

"Is it life? I would rather be without it, for there is quare small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night's porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed jars and foreign bacon. Many a man has spent a hundred years trying to get the dimensions of it and when he understands it at last and entertains the certain pattern of it in his head, be the hokey he takes to his bed and dies. He dies like a poisoned sheepdog. There is nothing so dangerous you can't smoke it, nobody will give you tuppence halfpenny for the half of it, and it kills you in the wind-up. It is a quare contraption, very dangerous, a certain death-trap."

"When their lordships asked Bacon How many bribes he had taken He had at least the grace To get very red in the face."

"The art of Biography Is different from Geography. Geography is about maps, But Biography is about chaps."

"Sir Christopher Wren Said, "I am going to dine with some men. If anyone calls Say I am designing St. Paul's.""

"John Stuart Mill, By a mighty effort of will, Overcame his natural bonhomie And wrote "Principles of Political Economy.""

"What I like about Clive Is that he is no longer alive. There is a great deal to be said For being dead."

"Sir Humphrey Davy Abominated gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium."

"Edward the Confessor Slept under the dresser. When that began to pall, He slept in the hall."

"It was a weakness of Voltaire's To forget to say his prayers, And one which to his shame He never overcame."

"Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely? When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered by a shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single tear; it gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity of such wealth as this dead man had piled up—without making one loyal friend to mourn him, without doing an act that could help his memory to the least honor. But when the news of his end came, it seemed to those living in the great vortices of business as if the earth, too, shuddered under a blow."

"'Many young women of twenty-six in these days could face such an ordeal, I suppose. I have observed a sort of imitative hardness about the products of the higher education of women today which would carry them through anything, perhaps. I am not prepared to say it is a bad thing in the conditions of feminine life prevailing at present. Mabel, however, is not like that. She is as unlike that as she is unlike the simpering misses that used to surround me as a child. She has plenty of brains; she is full of character; her mind and her tastes are cultivated; but it is all mixed up' — Mr Cupples waved his hands in a vague gesture — 'with ideals of refinement and reservation and womanly mystery. I fear she is not a child of the age.'"

"'What do you mean by "a man like me"?' he [Philip Trent] demanded with a sort of fierceness. 'Do you take me for a man without any normal instincts? I don't say you impress people as a simple, transparent sort of character — what Mr Calvin Bunner calls a case of openwork; I don't say a stranger might not think you capable of wickedness, if there was good evidence for it: but I say that a man who, after seeing you and being in your atmosphere, could associate you with the kind of abomination I imagined is a fool — the kind of fool who is afraid to trust his senses.'"

"She [Mabel Manderson] uttered a little laugh of impatience. 'So you think he has been talking me round. No, that is not so. I am merely sure he did not do it. Ah! I see you think that absurd. But see how unreasonable you are, Mr Trent! Just now you were explaining to me quite sincerely that it was foolishness in you to have a certain suspicion of me after seeing me and being in my atmosphere, as you said.' Trent started in his chair. She glanced at him and went on: 'Now, I and my atmosphere are much obliged to you, but we must stand up for the rights of other atmospheres. I know a great deal more about Mr Marlowe's atmosphere than you know about mine even now. I saw him constantly for several years. I don't pretend to know all about him; but I do know that he is incapable of a crime of bloodshed. The idea of his planning a murder is as unthinkable to me as the idea of your picking a poor woman's pocket, Mr Trent.'"

"Can you understand the soul of a man who never hesitated to take steps that would have the effect of hoodwinking people, who would use every trick of the markets to mislead, and who was at the same time scrupulous never to utter a direct lie on the most insignificant matter? Manderson was like that, and he was not the only one. I suppose you might compare the state of mind to that of a soldier who is personally a truthful man, but who will stick at nothing to deceive the enemy. The rules of the game allow it; and the same may be said of business as many business men regard it. Only with them it is always wartime."

"I can only say that you must have totally renounced all trust in the operations of the human reason; an attitude which, while it is bad Christianity and also infernal nonsense, is oddly enough bad Positivism too, unless I misunderstand that system."

"George the Third Ought never to have occurred. One can only wonder At so grotesque a blunder."

"Chapman & Hall Swore not at all. Mr Chapman's yea was yea, And Mr Hall's nay was nay."

"There are some places which, seen for the first time, yet seem to strike a chord of recollection. "I have been here before," we think to ourselves, "and this is one of my true homes." It is no mystery for those philosophers who hold that all which we shall see, with all which we have seen and are seeing, exists already in an eternal now; that all those places are home to us which in the pattern of our life are twisting, in past, present and future, tendrils of remembrance round our heart-strings."

"That is almost the definition of any friendship that is worthwhile — that we don't care a damn how you behave yourself."

"As he went through the half-darkness of the lamp-lit streets, deserted almost entirely at this hour, he brooded over his hard luck. What chance had he ever been given? Raught, for that matter, like many another in case like his, was far from grasping fully how bad his luck had been, how little the chance that life had offered. Neglect and harshness had marked him in infancy; there had been nothing at any time to tell against the effect of them. But in all of the past that he remembered and could understand there had been more than enough to be stored up as matter for savage resentment, for the soul-sick criminal's conviction that he owes the world no more than such repayment as he can make in its own coin."

"He was less afraid of gentlemen than of most other kinds of men; for instinct told him that, however detestable a gentleman's personal character might be, he was usually not inclined to be censorious or even inquisitive about the conduct of his fellow-creatures."

"I know, if anyone does — all research workers know — how much is missed that really matters because reports have to be written in officialese. They have to be, because a lot of us can't take anything seriously unless you make it dull for them."

"And as for that low, velvety voice of hers, if she asked me to murder my best friend I should have to do it on the spot."

"You may as well know, Philip — you'll soon find out, anyhow — the truth is she will flirt with any man that she doesn't actively dislike. She's so brimful of life she can't hold herself in — or she won't, rather; she says there's no harm in it, and she doesn't care if there is. Before her marriage she didn't go on in that way, but since it turned out badly she has been simply uncivilized on that point. And her being perfectly clear-headed about it makes it so much worse."

"Is it a cosmic law, d'you think, that conceited men's hats are always too small?"

"Lord Southrop was, of course, eccentric in his views; and you never knew — here the housekeeper, with a despondent head-shake, paused, leaving unspoken the suggestion that a man who did not think or behave like other people might go mad at any moment."

"[S]he had a singular spaciousness of mind in which nothing little or mean could live."

"Trent read and re-read the pitiful message [a suicide note], so full of the awful egotism of grief."

"I recur here to my personal point about the tendency to miss what the title means; or even what the title says. An article like this is called subjective because it has no subject. In a rambling column, whether because it is personal or impersonal, it is permissible to introduce personal trifles about oneself, as well as about other people, so long as it is made sufficiently obvious that they are trifling. And I may remark in this connexion, or disconnexion, that I happen to have a very strong objection to that trick of missing the point of a story, or sometimes even the obvious sense of the very name of a story. I have sometimes had occasion to murmur meekly that those who endure the heavy labour of reading a book might possibly endure that of reading the title-page of a book. For there are more examples than may be imagined, in which earnest critics might solve many of their problems about what a book is, merely by discovering what it professes to be. … It is odd that one example occurred in my own case... in a book called The Man Who was Thursday."

"An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one."

"Continental people have sex life; the English have hot-water bottles."

"In England everything is the other way round."

"On the Continent people have good food; in England, people have good table manners."

"Television is of great educational value. It teaches you while still young how to (a) kill, (b) rob, (c) embezzle, (d) shoot, (e) poison, and, generally speaking, (f) how to grow up into a Wild West outlaw or gangster by the time you leave school."

"The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it. To the eternal glory of British science, their labour bore fruit. To the eternal glory of British science their labour bore fruit. They suggested that if you do not drink it clear, or with lemon or rum and sugar, but pour a few drops of cold milk into it, and no sugar at all, the desired object is achieved. Once this refreshing, aromatic, oriental beverage was successfully transformed into colourless and tasteless gargling-water, it suddenly became the national drink of Great Britain and Ireland – still retaining, indeed usrping, the high-sounding title of tea."

"When people say England, they sometimes mean Great Britain, sometimes the United Kingdom, sometimes the British Isles, – but never England."

"Teach foreign how to be alive in England."

"No Jew was ever fool enough to turn Christian unless he was a clever man."

"Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan — spoiled."

"No... the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you—he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman."

"America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!"

"Oh, for the simple life, For tents and starry skies!"

"The past is our cradle, not our prison, and there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition."

"An Edward's England spat us out - a band Foredoomed to redden Vistula or Rhine, And leaf-like toss with every wind malign. All mocked the faith they could not understand."

"How full and rich a world Theirs to inhabit is— Sweet scent of grass and bloom, Playmates’ glad symphony, Cool touch of western wind, Sunshine’s divine caress. How should they know or feel They are in darkness? But, oh, the miracle! If a Redeemer came, Laid finger on their eyes— One touch and what a world, New-born in loveliness!"

"What a dark world—who knows?— Ours to inhabit is! One touch and what a strange Glory might burst on us, What a hid universe!"

"Somewhere in the trash he reads Martland has read that heavy men walk with surprising lightness and grace; as a result he trips about like a portly elf hoping to be picked up by a leprechaun."

"I could almost hear him scrabbling about in his brain for a deft, light opening. His Oscar Wilde touch. Martland has only two personalities – Wilde and Eeyore."

"No no, Jock…we're going to push him out of a window. Your bedroom window, I think. Yes, and we'll undress him first and say that he was making advances to you and jumped out of the window in a frenzy of thwarted love." "I say, Charlie, really, what a filthy rotten idea; I mean, think of my wife." "I never think of policemen's wives, their beauty maddens me like wine."

"Why do people build houses to keep the climate out, then cut holes in the walls to let it in again? I shall never understand."

"The coffee having arrived (how hard it is to write without the ablative absolute!) we guzzled genteelly for a while..."

"He had made one mistake in an otherwise flawless performance: he hadn't told me his name. Have you ever exchanged three words with an American without being told his name?"

"Ten minutes later I was in an enormous taxi-cab, an air-conditioned one, hired for the day for fifty dollars; it seems an awful lot, I know, but money's worth awfully little over there, you'd be surprised. It's because there's so much of it, you see."

"It was still only nine o'clock when I set off on the last leg of my journey, feeling old and dirty and incapable. You probably know the feeling if you are over eighteen."

""Goodness," I babbled, "but how awful for you. Not drinking, I mean. I mean, imagine getting up in the morning knowing that you're not going to feel any better all day"."

"To be on foot in the United States is only immoral, not illegal."

"I don't much care about tea-drinking in the afternoon; in the morning the stuff Jock brings to me in bed is like that Nepenthe which the wife of Thone gave to Jove-born Helena, but in the p.m. it always makes me think of Ganges mud in which crocodiles have been coupling."

"The cold pork in the fridge was wilting at the edges; it and I exchanged looks of mutual contempt, like two women wearing the same hat in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot."

""You would now be an enemy, in the third class, of my own organization." "Only third class?" I asked in the indignant tones which Queen Victoria surely used when she received the Abyssinian Order of Chastity, Second Class."

"It will be a sad day for the world when the Oriental gent realizes that Western bumbling is only Eastern guile in a different idiom. Well, a lot of it, anyway."

"Sleep slunk up like a black panther and sank its kindly fangs into what remained of the Mortdecai brain."

"Fate's fickle finger was feeling for my fundament."

"I have this heavy addiction to life and I'm told that the withdrawal symptoms are shocking."

"A moral coward, you see, is simply someone who has read the fine print on the back of his Birth Certificate and seen the little clause which says "You can't win.""

"You will learn nothing of importance from this story except, perhaps, how to die; but then, you were born knowing that and in any case it only has to be done once. It is easy: ask anyone who has done it."

"My first car was painted red down one side and blue down the other to confuse witnesses in case of an accident."

"Nobody ever seemed quite clear whether the expression "drunk as a lord" should be taken as a compliment or an insult."

"The only exercise I ever take is walking up hospital stairs to visit friends who've damaged themselves by taking exercise."

"Before the War you took your secretary to Paris and called her your wife. Now, in order to wriggle through the tax-gatherer's net, you take your wife to Paris and call her your secretary."

"Cricket is a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves some conception of Eternity."

"Can't see my little Willy."

"Do you like Kipling?" "I don't know, you naughty boy, I've never kippled."

"For Heaven's sake, send help! There's a man trying to get into my room and the door's locked!"

"I want to back the favourite, please. My sweetheart gave me a pound to do it both ways!"

"'Isaiah' – what a funny name for a teddy bear!" "Well, you see one eye's 'igher than the other."

"Could you exchange this lucky charm for a baby's feeding-bottle?"

"I like seeing experienced girls home." "But I'm not experienced!" "You're not home yet!"

"I've been struggling for years to get a fur coat. How did you get yours?" "I left off struggling."

"Judge: "You are prevaricating, sir. Did you or did you not sleep with this woman?" Co-respondent: "Not a wink, my lord!""

"She didn't ask me to the christening, so I'm not going to the wedding."

"In the past the mood of the comic postcard could enter into the central stream of literature, and jokes barely different from McGill's could casually be uttered between the murders in Shakespeare's tragedies. That is no longer possible, and a whole category of humour, integral to our literature till 1800 or thereabouts, has dwindled down to these ill-drawn postcards, leading a barely legal existence in cheap stationers' windows. The corner of the human heart that they speak for might easily manifest itself in worse forms, and I for one should be sorry to see them vanish."

"Always judge your fellow passengers to be the opposite of what they strive to appear to be. For instance, a military man is not quarrelsome, for no man doubts his courage; but a snob is. A clergyman is not over strait- laced, for his piety is not questioned; but a cheat is. A lawyer is not apt to be argumentative; but an actor is. A woman that is all smiles and graces is a vixen at heart : snakes fascinate. A stranger that is obsequious and over-civil without apparent cause is treacherous: cats that purr are apt to bite and scratch. Pride is one thing, assumption is another; the latter must always get the cold shoulder, for whoever shews it is no gentleman: men never affect to be what they are, but what they are not. The only man who really is what he appears to be is — a gentleman."

"I want you to see Peel, Stanley, Graham, Sheil, Russell, Macaulay, Old Joe, and soon. They are all upper-crust here."

"We reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents."

"We can do without any article of luxury we have never had; but when once obtained, it is not in human natur’ to surrender it voluntarily."

"Circumstances alter cases."

"It seems to me, all created critters look down on each other. The British and French look down on the s, and colonists look down upon s and Indians, while we look down upon them all. It's the way of the world, I do suppose; but the road ain't a pleasant one."

"Commodore Marlin: My friend, I ask you a plain civil question; will you give me a plain, civil answer?"

"Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive."

"Punctuality [...] is the soul of business."

"Everything has altered its dimensions, except the world we live in. The more we know of that, the smaller it seems. Time and distance have been abridged, remote countries have become accessible, and the antipodes are upon visiting terms. There is a reunion of the human race; and the family resemblance now that we begin to think alike, dress alike, and live alike, is very striking. The South Sea Islanders, and the inhabitants of China, import their fashions from Paris, and their fabrics from Manchester, while Rome and London supply missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth,’ to bring its inhabitants into ‘one fold, under one Shepherd.’ Who shall write a book of travels now? Livingstone has exhausted the subject. What field is there left for a future Munchausen? The far West and the far East have shaken hands and pirouetted together, and it is a matter of indifference whether you go to the moors in Scotland to shoot grouse, to South America to ride an alligator, or to Indian jungles to shoot tigers-there are the same facilities for reaching all, and steam will take you to either with the equal ease and rapidity. We have already talked with New York; and as soon as our speaking-trumpet is mended shall converse again. ‘To waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,’ is no longer a poetic phrase, but a plain matter of fact of daily occurrence. Men breakfast at home, and go fifty miles to their counting-houses, and when their work is done, return to dinner. They don’t go from London to the seaside, by way of change, once a year; but they live on the coast, and go to the city daily. The grand tour of our forefathers consisted in visiting the principle cities of Europe. It was a great effort, occupied a vast deal of time, cost a large sum of money, and was oftener attended with danger than advantage. It comprised what was then called, the world: whoever had performed it was said to have ‘seen the world,’ and all that it contained. The Grand Tour now means a voyage round the globe, and he who has not made it has seen nothing."

"I don't respect your beliefs and I don't care if you're offended."

"My name is Patrick, and I'm a biped carbon-based life form. In my spare time I enjoy walking upright and being warm-blooded, and I'm a Scorpio.* I live here … on planet Earth, a piece of rock orbiting a giant fireball in the middle of nowhere. I feel I belong here."

"I admire anyone who's genuinely trying to achieve spiritual enlightenment and live a peaceful life. But religious dogma is a barrier to that. The last thing a dogmatist wants is for anyone to be enlightened, any more than a pharmaceutical company wants anybody cured."

"If you're looking at the Bible for a guide to living a compassionate, wise and humane life, well, frankly you've got more chance of finding a lap dancing club in Mecca or a virgin in a catholic orphanage."

"It does seem quite ironic to me that the very people who have made no attempt to think for themselves, are always the most vocal in demanding respect for their "ideas". But some Muslims go further than this and claim that they're being victimized in British society. But I don't really believe that's true. I do think a lot of people are getting fed up of hearing about Muslims all the time, and wish that Muslims would just shut up and get on with their lives, instead of constantly belly-aching about nothing, but that's not the same as being victimized. But because we live in a liberal democracy and therefore have certain double standards to maintain, any criticism of Islam or of Muslims always draws the immediate accusation of Islamophobia, a dishonest word which seeks to portray legitimate comment as some kind of hate crime."

"It seems to me that if God had intended for you to cover your face then, in His wisdom, He would have provided you with a flap of skin for the purpose."

"I don't want to be too hard on Islam here, for two reasons: firstly because I don't want to be murdered by some hysterical, self-righteous, carpet-chewing, book-burning muppet with shit for brains. And secondly, I do think we need to make allowances for Islam, because we have to remember Islam is quite a young religion. So, maybe right now it's just going through a difficult age, a little headstrong, full of itself, thinks it knows all the answers, but I'm sure it'll learn. I think years from now, a lot of intelligent Muslims will be looking back on all this Medievalism and Jihad nonsense with embarrassment and shame, like the Germans do with the Nazis, and maybe then we can all have a good laugh about it, but in the mean time I think that any religion that demands earthly vengeance and retribution for any reason is not really a religion at all, but an illness and should be treated as such."

"It's often said of Jesus that he could have saved himself, but he chose not to. And if you read the Gospels it's clear that he could have talked himself out of that crucifixion quite easily, but he was just too stubborn. The Romans didn't really want to kill him at all, but in the end they went along with it because he was being such a prick about it. The truth is he couldn't wait to get up on that cross. In fact, I think Christianity only exists because Jesus Christ just happened to be a masochist. I think he took one look at the hammer and nails and he couldn't believe his luck. He thought, "Well, in three days I'll be in Heaven, but until then I'm going to enjoy myself.""

"One person I do feel a little sorry for, though, is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important clergyman in Britain and he's only got two lousy palaces to live in. What sort of life is that for a man of God? I bet if Jesus came back, even he'd be embarrassed for him; I bet he wouldn't be able to look him in the eye."

"Here in the UK, we've now got an evangelical television channel — it's the kind of thing that will be very familiar to everyone in the United States, especially if you've ever turned on your TV set on a Sunday morning, and seen one holy man after another, urging you to send money so that Jesus can buy a new Cadillac. Apparently, Jesus can't save the world until he's been properly kitted out with a million-dollar mansion, and a private jet — some small print in the Gospels that we must have missed."

"Right now, especially in the Middle East, things are shaping up quite nicely to blow us all to kingdom come. Except no Kingdom is going to come because this is the Kingdom, it has already come and we are already living the dream. Religion knows this but it doesn't want us to know it because then it would no longer have any reason to exist. So instead, it seeks to position itself between us and our experience; a self-appointed filter, a parasite."

"But if I could make just one small positive suggestion. Everybody knows that Saudi Arabia is very rich in certain mineral deposits — notably of course, sand. Oh my goodness, it's got so much sand, it could export the stuff. Or, even better, it could import a load of water and cement, mix itself into a giant block of concrete, and do us all a huge favour."

"What is the difference between a Doctor of Medicine and a Doctor of Theology? One prescribes drugs, while the other might as well be on drugs."

"According to current birthrate projections, France will be a majority Muslim country anyway in about 50 years... I get a lot of e-mails from Americans who think that Europeans are spineless. And I think they're right."

"I do feel somewhat guilty that I'm not more grateful to Jesus, but I just wish he had asked me before he went ahead with it [being crucified], because now I feel like I'm being billed for something I didn't order. Because that's the deal, isn't it? If you're a Christian, you're born already in debt to Jesus, and it's a debt you can only repay, in full, by dying. That's some deal you've got yourself into there; that's like being asked to pay off a mortgage for a house you already own."

"Well it's a gloomy, rainy old day to be here in London, but it could be worse; I could be in Saudi Arabia where men are men, and women are cattle."

"Radical Islam has seen us for what we are: a soft touch. It sees that political correctness is like a drug that we just can't stop injecting, even though we know it's going to kill us. And they're taking full advantage of that, turning our sense of fairness against us, and making us despise ourselves for one of our best qualities. And any concession made will be seen as a sign of weakness to be exploited further, because there is no dialogue with radical Islam. It doesn't want to be agreed with, it wants to be obeyed. It thinks it has the God-given right, aptly enough, to make the rules, not just for Muslims, but for everyone, and some of us, frankly, think that's a little bit too much to ask."

"This guy (Pat Robertson) obviously wants to be a prophet so bad. I wonder if he walks around at home dressed up in a bed sheet, talking Aramaic, maybe parting the waters in the bathtub occasionally, just to keep in practice?"

"On the other hand, and let's face it, there's always another hand, unless you're a Saudi Arabian shoplifter of course, hurt feelings can be quite traumatic. I've heard that it can take seconds, sometimes even minutes, to get over it."

"So I really don't care what [God's] got to say about anything, and if he came clumping down from heaven right now in a big pair of hobnail boots, waving the book of Judges in my face, I'd simply tell him what I tell every other evangelising prick I meet: "No thanks. I'm not interested in your phony salvation. I'd prefer damnation. Now piss off, I've got some sinning to do.""

"We're talking about terrorism carried out in the name of Islam, by Muslims, and justified using their holy scripture. But apparently it's got nothing to do with Islam. Well, I'm sorry, but just because every Muslim doesn't support it doesn't mean it's not Islamic. People say you can't judge Islam by its followers, but that's like saying you can't judge a football team by its results. Islam is its followers. Because there's no central authority the Koran is open to interpretation by men, who, being human, will always interpret to suit their own cultural prejudices. So Islam is its followers. It's a representation of how they interpret their holy book. And therefore, the only way it can be judged is by their behaviour."

"We need to stop pretending — because that's what we're doing: pretending — that all cultures are equal, when we can clearly see they're not. Islamic culture is not equal to Western culture; it encourages violence against women, against Jews and homosexuals. It sanctions polygamy and marrying old men to young children in a disgusting travesty of human relations. Anyone in the West advocating these values would very quickly find themselves in jail. It's not equal — it's inferior — and given Islam's openness about its totalitarian agenda, this is not something that should be encouraged in any way. It should be discouraged by firm legislation and by rigorous enforcement of the law. Remember, the law?"

"If we can't bring ourselves to say what's in our hearts when it truly matters, then we've already given up our freedom and with it the freedom of future generations, which is something that we've got no right to do. We didn't earn this freedom; it was handed to us on a plate by people who did earn it with their lives. We don't own it; we're custodians of it: it's not ours to give away."

"So, I hope the Hindus have it right, because if there's any justice in this world, you will be reincarnated as a female, homosexual Jew, and then you'll find out what a pain it is having to deal with violent, primitive dickheads like you."

"But just because I believe that religion is a cynical perversion of the human spirit that exists purely for the benefit of the parasites we know as clergy, doesn't mean I'm not looking for answers to the big questions just like everybody else — you know, the questions that religion pretends it has answers to, because it knows that for some people, anyone answer is better than no answer at all. Questions like, Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going?...Is there an afterlife, and if so, is it fully licensed for alcoholic drinks? That last bit may seem like a trivial concern to you, but not to me, because I live in a society where many people enjoy a social drink from time to time — not a huge amount, just enough to kill a horse. And in these enlightened days of the twenty-first century, when everyone's human rights and cultural identity are so very important, I don't see why I should have to abandon my culture, just because I'm dead. It's only the afterlife, not Saudi Arabia. Let's keep things in perspective. Of course in reality, we know that there will be beer in heaven, and lots of it, otherwise it wouldn't be heaven, would it? It's almost not even worth pointing that out, but I thought I would anyway, just in case someone wants to take the opportunity to be offended."

"When it's claimed, as it was last week on British television, that Muslims in Britain are victims of British intolerance — yeah right, 1600 mosques worth of intolerance so far, and still building — I think the truth is that, if they are victims of anything, it's Muslim intolerance, because if you are an ordinary Muslim, then surely the last thing you need is a bunch of Islamists speaking for you, because everything they do and say reflects back on you. When they try to force unwanted Islamic values into our education system, for example, or when one of their representatives crudely insults this country by comparing it with Nazi Germany, that reflects on all Muslims, because these people speak for all Muslims. Don't they? No? Well maybe somebody should tell them that."

"Being called closed-minded by religious people is a bit like being called yellow by a bunch of bananas."

"So, what do you think the British government did in the face of this open threat to public order? Go on, have a guess. That's right, they caved in like a bunch of spineless pussies! I couldn't have put it better myself."

"It's at times like this, isn't it, when you realize just how much we need the United Nations — about as much as we need an ear infection...Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of identity. This is my Holy Trinity, each one an intrinsic aspect of my god: Freedom, the Holiest of Holies. Yes it bloody well is. It is absolutely sacred and inviolable, beyond any negotiation or compromise, now and forever. Amen."

"The whole point of female concealment in Islamic society is that men are not expected to take responsibility for their sexual urges, so any woman who is not covered up from head to toe is asking to be raped. The burka, therefore, legitimises rape. It apologises for rape. It justifies rape. Are you listening, feminists? And this makes it, in my opinion, as offensive a public statement as a Ku Klux Klan uniform or a Nazi swastika, and I think it should be treated with exactly the same revulsion and contempt."

"You know, I found out recently that the word "heretic" comes from the Greek word "airetikós", meaning "able to choose" — which pretty much says it all, don't you think?"

"Sharia … is, of course, invalid because it's God's Law, and God doesn't exist."

"I don't think it's possible to be too aggressive in defending freedom of speech, which is ... much, much more sacred than any god, or prophet, or scripture, could or will ever be, from now until the end of time, or for eternity: whichever lasts longer."

"There's an ideological fervor about this prosecution that's almost religious in its intensity, because let's be clear, this is a heresy trial by any other name. They can't refute Mr. Wilders' statements, so instead they've resorted to the kind of cheap legal stunt we'd expect from the likes of Mugabe to shut their opponent up. They've accused him of being divisive and inflammatory, and yes, sometimes the truth can be divisive and inflammatory if it has been suppressed for long enough and has become sufficiently taboo, as it clearly has in the Netherlands, because according to the prosecution it doesn't even matter that what he says is true; what matters is that it's illegal. Well, when the truth is against the law, then there's something seriously wrong with the law, because when the truth is no defence, there is no defence, and the law has no anchor, so it will drift wherever the wind of political expedience blows, and this week it blew straight into a crooked courtroom in Amsterdam, where justice will now be made to fight for its life, starved of the oxygen of truth that gives it life."

"If the Catholic Church hadn't so consistently and virulently condemned the Jews for killing Jesus, there would have been no Holocaust. There would have been no reason for anyone to think about picking on Jews. And that means today there might be no Jewish state, and no Middle East conflict. That's quite a lot to have on your conscience, isn't it? How fortunate for the Catholic Church that it doesn't possess a conscience, but at least it gives ordinary Catholics an opportunity to feel guilty about something real for a change, if they feel so inclined, and to reflect on the reality that the Jews didn't kill Jesus at all. The Catholic Church killed Jesus, and has spent the last two thousand years dragging his entrails through the dirt. And if he came back tomorrow, he'd be the first to say so. You know it's true. We all do."

"Any religion that endorses violence is incapable of delivering spiritual enlightenment — how obvious does that have to be? — and it has no right even to call itself a religion. Without the shield of religion to hide behind, Islam would be banned in the civilized world as a political ideology of hate — and we have no obligation to make allowances for it, any more than we do for Nazism. It's a bigger threat to our freedom than Nazism ever was. Yes, both are totalitarian, and both divide the world unnecessarily into us-and-them, the pure and the impure, and both make no secret of their desire to exterminate the Jews. But we were all more or less on the same side against the Nazis, whereas the Islamonazis have got plenty of friends among people in the West who ought to know better."

"It's often claimed that many people in the West are converting to Islam, and it's true that some are, but it's also true that many Muslims in the West are leaving Islam, but you don't hear so much about them for obvious reasons. Some of them have been brave enough to make themselves known, and reach out to help other Muslims who want to escape the tyranny of their religion, and, like them, it's the religion I have a problem with, not the people. So no, I don't hate Muslims — thanks for asking — I wish them well. Even the fanatics who stand at the roadside with their dopey little banners and bulging eyeballs, calling for death to the West — I even wish those boneheads well, in that I wish them good mental health, if that isn't too wildly optimistic. And of course I know that there are lots of moderate, peaceful Muslims. Indeed, many of them are so moderate and peaceful, they're invisible and silent, and that is part of the problem. And just because there are lots of peaceful Muslims, it doesn't mean the religion itself is not an aggressive, fascist ideology that threatens all our freedoms, nor does it mean that western governments aren't falling over themselves to make excuses for it, pretending that Islam has nothing to do with the violence inspired and sanctioned by its scripture, and repeatedly carried out in its name."

"Mark Twain said that faith is believing what you know ain't so. Well, political correctness is doing what you know ain't right. In every western country, Islamic extremists are allowed to exploit religious privilege for political ends by claiming to represent all Muslims, and the media always treat them as if they do. These groups give themselves official-sounding titles and talk a smooth line in community harmony, while doing all they can to prevent integration: to keep Muslims apart and ghettoised in a separate society, with a separate identity, separate rules and standards. In other words, they exist to cause division in society; to drive a wedge between communities that doesn't need to be there, any more than they need to exist as organisations."

"People keep framing this as a religious freedom issue, but there's a difference between practising your religion — which everyone has the right to do — and rubbing your religion in people's faces as a triumphalist political statement, which is what's happening here."

"Multiculturalism in Europe is dead in the water, as every recent election has shown. Even the politicians are admitting it now. Some people cling to the illusion of it still, the way the Soviets clung to the illusion of Communism, but it's over, and these show trials and violent street attacks are symptoms of its death throes. They're the desperate acts of desperate people who've totally lost their way. Criminalizing opinion is an open admission that lawmakers have lost control, and created a situation they can't handle. But that's what happens when the people are never asked for their opinion, and, when they give it, it's ignored."

"I oppose Islam, for the simple reason that Islam opposes me and everything I believe in. I don't care how Muslims feel about that. I don't care how anyone feels about it, nor should I be required to. In my opinion, Islam's disgusting treatment of women is a crime against humanity, nothing less. It's a thousand percent wrong, there's no grey area, it's unconscionable and unforgivable, and it's poisoning the whole world. It's not different or relative, it's backward and uncivilised. There's no excuse for it, and no excuse for defending it."

"The Koran tells Muslims to hate Jews because they're Jews, not because of Palestine. It doesn't mention the Palestinians. And if Israel disappeared tomorrow, Jews in Sweden and all over Europe would still be harassed and abused by ignorant hate-filled Muslim immigrants for being Jews, and for no other reason. And then all you multicultural dhimmis-in-waiting would have to find another mealy-mouthed excuse to look the other way. Fortunately for Jews, they've had a lot of practice at taking abuse and they've got fairly broad shoulders, which, of course, they'll need to carry around all those Nobel Prizes. Statistically a Jew is thousands of times more likely than a Muslim to win a Nobel Prize, and there can be only one reason for that, can't there? That's right, Islamophobia. Clearly the Nobel committees have an irrational prejudice against religion-induced ignorance, and they're obviously in need of some urgent cultural awareness and sensitivity training."

"'Faith' is merely fear dressed up as virtue."

"Faith is the grip that clergy have over you. It's the invisible rope around your neck that pulls you along the road they want you to travel, for their benefit, not yours. It's a dead-end word. It's a word of bondage. It's a word that lets you believe what you've been told to believe, without feeling that you've been told what to believe, but you have, and you can stop pretending any time you like. It's not a virtue, that's the last thing it is. It's an abdication from reality. It's a dumb act of self-hypnosis. It's a cowardly cop-out. It's gullibility with a halo, and hiding behind it is like pretending to be an invalid."

"Religion disapproves of original thought the way Dracula disapproves of sunlight."

"The biggest hate crime against Muslims in America is the existence of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. If you're a Muslim American who wants to live in peace and freedom — and, presumably, that's why you're in America in the first place — these people are your worst enemy. They're parasites on your identity. They don't represent you — they claim ownership of you. Everything they do and say reflects back, badly, on you. Yet you are the only thing giving them a veneer of respectability. Without you, these fanatics would be standing on street corners shouting at people. They invoke the phony lie of Islamophobia in order to marginalize and ghettoize you and to make you feel like a victim, because their whole existence depends on you being a victim. They claim to challenge the stereotyping of Muslims — and how do they do it? By stereotyping Muslims as professional complainers and malcontents who always want special treatment; who can't take the slightest criticism; and who are aggressively litigious to the point of obsession. These people are the problem. They're not the solution."

"When you allow millions of people to immigrate from places where they mutilate their daughters as a matter of course; where they kill them in a heartbeat over some twisted sense of honor; and where rape victims are treated as criminals; it doesn't take a genius to know that you're going to be importing these values and attitudes as well, wholesale, unless you take steps to prevent it. And that's something we've spectacularly failed to do in Europe. Indeed, we've encouraged it by fostering separatism and ghettoization in the guise of our old friend, Multiculturalism. And as a consequence, Islamic violence against women and girls is an ugly reality in Europe. And for anyone to use the law to try and suppress discussion of it is not enlightened or tolerant or liberal. It's shameful and stupid and cowardly and unforgivable."

"There are millions of people on this planet who claim to have a personal relationship with somebody called Jesus. And each of those people, it seems, has a different Jesus in their imagination, which is where Jesus lives. A Jesus who shares all their particular values and prejudices. That's what he's there for, after all. It's how he earns his keep. So if, for example, you don't like homosexuals very much ,you can be pretty sure your Jesus won't like them very much either. It's really quite amazing. It's almost as if he can read your mind. But that's Jesus for you. There's nothing he can't do... except tolerate homosexuals, apparently. As for abortion, don't even get him started on that subject. He's got plenty to say about abortion, although none of it actually appears in the Gospels, but don't you worry about that. He's dead against it if you are. And this is the beauty of Jesus, the magic, the miracle of Jesus, is that each of us can create him in our own image, and he can be whoever we want him to be. He's as versatile as Mr Potato Head. As for the man who it may have all been based on, if he ever existed, he's long gone, like Abraham Lincoln's famous axethat had both its head and handle replaced several times,yet was still as good as new. I mention this because atheists also have their own version of Jesus. Jesus, whether we like it or not, is a part of our culture,so yes, I have my version of Jesus, even though I don't believe in God, and my Jesus despises Christianity as the greatest swindle ever perpetrated. Indeed, if my Jesus ever came face to face with a senior clergymanor a televangelist he'd be hard pressed not to slap him around the roomand kick him down a flight of stairs."

"There's a common misconception among Christians that the purposeof their religion is to spread the message of Jesus. In fact, the purpose of Christianity is to suppress the message of Jesusand to swindle you out of the kingdom of heaven. Christianity is grounded in the notion that there's something fundamentally wrongwith being born a human being. Original sin. It's probably the most poisonousand self-destructive idea in human history, so naturally it has been enthusiastically embraced by clergy. Whereas Jesus seeks to empower you, clergy seek to weaken you,to make you feel small and helpless. They don't want you to consider the lilies of the field or to seek the kingdom of heaven withinbecause that's too much like the message of Jesus. They'd rather you focussed instead on the ludicrous celestial psycho dramaof God and Satan and angels and demons and hellfire, and to burden yourself with baseless guilt and morbid fear of eternal damnation. The depict this earthly life as a grubby thing to be transcendedbecause they want you disconnected from the planet that gives you life. To feel that you're apart from nature, not a part of nature, because they don't want you grounded in any way."

"They want you rootless, uncertain, susceptible, while they hold out the promise of eternal salvation, access to the kingdom of heaven, no less, but only through them, as if they control the only bridge over the chasm of hellfireand there's a toll to pay (of course there is) and the church bells ring: "Kerching! Kerching! "They might as well be selling property on Jupiter, yet they're legally allowed to get away with this fraudand to pay no taxes on the proceeds. And that's why the Catholic Church today measures its wealth in tens of billions, and if you live to be a thousand you'll never meet a poor televangelist. Yet Jesus never asked anybody for money. Jesus never passed around a collection plateor got people to tithe part of their income to him. Everything he did, he did for free. He had lepers and cripples lining up around the block, and not one of them had medical insurance (can you believe the irresponsibility of those people?) but Jesus didn't care. He healed them anyway, absolutely free. And when I say free, I don't mean free in a toll-free prayer line kind of way either, as in: "Call now, free, and there'll be somebody there to pray with you,"and take your credit card number, so that by the time you hang up"you'll be committed to making a regular monthly payment"to somebody who flies around in a private jet. "Not that kind of free. In exploiting Jesus to swindle humanity,they've also managed to swindle Jesus,because they've stolen his name and his identityand turned it into a commercial trademark. If he ever comes back he should sue. Now Jesus is like Colonel Sanders - they're just using his picture. The difference is Colonel Sanders was bought out. Jesus has been sold out. And so have you if you're a Christian. You've been framed for something that you didn't do."

"If Jesus really was crucified as per the Gospels,he didn't die for anybody's sins but his own. He died because he posed a threat to a group of people with strongly vested interests and very savage values. You may recall, he told the pharisees point blank where they could find the kingdom of heaven.Don't look here or there, he said, look within. But they didn't want to hear that any more than the modern pharisees want to hear it, because they knew very well what he meant, that the kingdom of heaven is a state of awareness in the here and nowthat doesn't require the stewardship of professional clergy, and that if we took his advice to seek it within, not only would we find it, we'd find the strength and the wisdomto put them and their whole bloodsucking fear mongering criminal racketpermanently out of business. And because they lived in the kind of brutal societywhere they could have him put to death for his words, that's exactly what they did, just as they would today in certain Muslim countries. But you don't have to feel guilty about it because you weren't there. You had no opportunity to influence events. You are entirely blameless. And the only guilt that you need to feelis maybe a little passing sheepish embarrassmentat ever having fallen for this insulting nonsense in the first place. Anyway, that's enough from me. I'm going back outside now to consider the lilies of the fieldand to plant a few potatoes in the good clean life-giving earth. Peace."

"Apparently I am going to Hell for rejecting Jesus, among other things. [...] I don't reject Jesus. I reject religion. I'm happy to listen to Jesus all day long, as long as he keeps his mouth shut about religion. And specifically I reject Christianity, along with the clerical criminals who run Christianity, and the fake artificial Jesus they have invented for public consumption. The man known as St Paul (for reasons which I've never really understood) was the first one to push this supernatural nonsense about Jesus, but the early Church capitalised on it and exploited it enthusiastically. They needed Jesus to be a god so that they could use him to generate fear, which of course is the only level they know how to operate on, and also so that they could claim supernatural authority through him, which is the best kind of authority to have when you're bluffing."

"As a mere man, Jesus was almost useless to them. All he could offer were words of compassion and wisdom, and what earthly good would they be to the men who run the Church? That would be like handing a slide rule to a monkey. So they needed to make him a god, but of course they already had a god, the same one they've got today, the fictional psychopath of the desert. So they had to find some way of conflating Jesus, author of the Sermon on the Mount, with this horrible monstrous entity of vengeance and death. Quite a theological challenge that was always going to take some specialist bullshitting, but they finally managed it in the fourth century when they solidified the idea of the Trinity, the three gods in one, or the three god trick, as I like to think of it, the classic Christian con - God the father, God the son, and God the holy spirit; although if you're like me you may prefer the atheist trinity; that's God the imposter, God the fraud, and God the wholly phoney. Wholly as in entirely, completely, absolutely, one hundred percent fake, false, and phoney baloney, not to put too fine a point on it."

"The Trinity is an outrageous piece of semantic flummery designed to confuse, not enlighten. And it follows a basic rule in religion that, ideally, not only should the thing you believe be absolutely impossible, but any explanation of it should be impossible to understand. And the Trinity obliges handsomely on both counts, as these three entities - the father (God), the son (Jesus), and the holy spirit (your guess is as good as mine) become as one (miraculously, of course) while remaining separate, so that each is uniquely God, yet each is completely God. I know. You could listen to an explanation from now until next week and be none the wiser, which is, of course, the whole idea. We could argue about Jesus until we're blue in the face, about whether he existed and whether he was divine and all the rest of it, but some things are beyond dispute, and it is a matter of historical fact that the Trinity is pure invention by Christian clergy, so any Christian clergyman who tells you it's the truth is either ignorant of history or a goddamned liar. Which do you think it is? Yeah, me too. And this is what I reject. Not Jesus, but religion and the clerical criminals who run it. The people Jesus despised as much as I do. White sepulchres, he called them. Outwardly wholesome, inwardly rotten, and he was being way, way too kind in my opinion. And if I have to go to Hell for my opinion, and it seems that I do, then so be it. I can think of worse things."

"In fact, since I said in a previous video that I'd rather go to Hell than be a Christian, I've been contacted by several people urging me to recant those foolish words and repent before it's too late. Hell is real, they tell me, Satan is real. And they say it with such conviction you just know they've got the information from some kind of infallible authority. Luckily, however, I'm quite looking forward to going to Hell. I've heard so much about the place it almost seems like a home away from home to me now. I understand it's likely to be warmer than I'm used to, which surprises me, as life is warm and death is cold, so, if anything, you would expect Hell to be on the chilly side, but apparently it isn't, according to those who know. I am very grateful that so many experts have testified to the definite existence of Hell for my benefit. It's a real weight off my mind. I was beginning to worry that the idea of Hell might be just a cynical ploy to intimidate weak-minded gullible people into submitting to religious fascism. How comforting to know that it's real, and that there really is everything to fear after death. Thank God for Satan. What would you Christians do without him? So before we denigrate poor old Satan too much, I know he's everybody's favourite bad guy and everything, the lord of misrule and all that, but the next time you're down on your knees praying like an idiot you might want to think about offering a prayer of thanks to the big guy downstairs, because without him in his essential role of universal bogeyman, none of this delusional nonsense of yours would even be possible. so, in that sense, Satan is your saviour, not Jesus. What can I say? Them's the breaks. Peace."

"They shouldn't need photographs to prove this guy is dead. They should have kept the body. They should have brought the son-of-a-bitch back to New York, pickled him in alcohol, and mounted him on top of the Ground Zero mosque with a pork chop in his mouth and a fireman's axe up his ass — or is that just me? Facing Mecca, of course, because we wouldn't want to be disrespectful."

"The European Union is very popular with politicians, because it's very good to politicians. It was created for their benefit. It's not so good to voters, because it denies them a voice — another reason it's popular with politicians. These days, we in Europe no longer make most of our own laws. We have them handed down to us by people we haven't elected and can't remove. The people we do elect are powerless to change anything, even if they wanted to, and most of them don't want to, because they've got their snouts in the trough of a corrupt organisation whose accounts haven't been signed off for the last sixteen years."

"The fact that a Jewish state needs to exist at all — and it does need to exist — is an indictment of all humanity, and especially the Catholic Church, whose centuries-long program of aggressive Jew hatred has been ingrained right into the European psyche so that it takes almost nothing to bring it out."

"Anyone who criticisms Islam publicly can expect to be threatened with physical violence. If that's not terrorism, then what is it? In the world of the cultural terrorist, if you oppose the oppression of women and minorities, you're an enemy of religious freedom; if you despise violent superstition, you're a racist; and if you reject religious totalitarianism, you have a mental illness. Let me tell you something, when you get to the stage where anyone criticising your beliefs is automatically deemed to have a mental illness, that is a sure sign of mental illness."

"There are many reasons why the religion of Islam impoverishes western society, but the main one, in my opinion, is that it degrades and debases women, except, of course, for left-wing women, who happily degrade and debase themselves defending Islam, like turkeys defending Christmas. A woman in Islam needs to be covered from head to toe because men are not expected to exhibit any kind of basic self-control. I get a lot of correspondence from angry Muslim males and I've lost count of the number of times I've been told that western women are asking to be raped because of the way they dress. No other religion teaches people to think like this. Recently here in Britain, we've had a rash of Muslim gangs pimping and raping young girls in northern England. I do mean Muslim gangs, and not Asians, as the media keep reporting. There are no Sikhs or Hindus involved in this, and to call them Asians to avoid naming the real problem is a slander on Hindus and Sikhs. These men do it because they regard non-Muslim women as subhuman trash. And this poison is coming directly from their religion, a religion whose values are dictated and imposed by some of the most narrow-minded, psychotic human beings on this planet. And, coming as I do from an Irish Catholic background, believe me, that's saying something."

"Andy and his little gang of bearded apes have made it clear that they intend to patrol the streets of London enforcing Sharia and preventing people going about their lawful business. I'll be interested to see how that works out for them. I've known a few Eastenders in my time, and I can't think of anyone — with the possible exception of Geordies (that's people from Newcastle) — who are less likely to tolerate having their pint of beer, their betting shop and their song and dance interfered with by a bunch of puffed-up bearded blowfish in pyjamas. And that's just the women."

"You probably know that this week Britain has been terrorized by an underclass of welfare-dependent, drug-addled criminal scum who have been allowed to run riot in the streets because the police haven't been allowed to do their job and protect the public. The media is full of speculation about why it happened and what is the root cause. Well, that's easy. The root cause is stupidity. A complete lack of imagination. A stunted, feral view of the world that amounts to self-inflicted moral and mental disablement. And it's the direct product of an entitlement culture that rewards idleness, encourages victimhood, and compensates criminals."

"The European Union is not, in fact, a union at all, but a continent-wide political coup. What began as a common market has now metamorphosed by stealth into a supranational political dictatorship, a parasitical organism living on the backs of the European nation states, sucking their lifeblood and slowly killing them off; a bureaucratic tyranny that wants to "harmonize" out of existence the national identities that have made Europe a continent of genuine diversity and a cultural crucible whose values have shaped the entire western world. But they want to put a stop to all that in the European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and this is why European laws are never enacted in response to any kind of organic need in society, but as top-down directives intended to impose indiscriminate uniformity for its own sake."

"I think religion is utter nonsense, and I claim the right to criticise, ridicule and insult it as much as I like, but not the right to stamp out harmless aspects of it; which is why I'm a secularist, and not a totalitarian. I have a copy of the Bible in my house because it's part of my cultural heritage, not because I think the Bible is true any more than I think Shakespeare's plays are true, but I wouldn't be without them either. I like churches, especially the sound of church bells, and I don't want to see them bulldozed, but I do want to see the power of the Church not only bulldozed, but ground into a fine dust and buried in the deepest part of the deepest ocean on the furthest planet it's possible to find. Religion needs to be kept in check when it tries to step on people or when it tries to elbow its way into their lives uninvited. The Nativity doesn't do this. It doesn't even come close. It's part and parcel of the Christmas furniture. It's part and parcel of the culture that I and most people in the western world were born and raised in, and it only excludes people who want to be excluded."

"I used to be a lot more critical of Israel, and I used to believe there was a fairly simple two-state solution, because I used to believe the Arabs were acting in good faith. I still want to believe that, but the evidence tells me I'd be a fool to believe it, because I've seen that every concession Israel makes is met with more demands and more excuses not to negotiate. They could have had peace ten times over if they wanted it, but they don't want peace, they want victory, and they won't be happy until Israel is wiped from the map. A member of Fatah central committee said as much on television recently, but as he said, they keep that to themselves, and tell the rest of the world a different story."

"One guy said, "I'm from Saudi Arabia and I'm proud of my country." Well, good for you, but forgive me for asking why. If you live in Saudi Arabia, what on Earth have you got to be proud of? If you couldn't dig money straight out of the ground, you'd all be starving. The only thing your country has to offer the world is oil. Well, it's not the only thing, but we don't need any sand, and we're all up to here with Jihad, thanks very much."

"Free speech means being able to express an honest opinion—in case you didn't know—and my honest opinion is that Wahhabi Islam is such an obvious mental affliction, that science ought to be looking for a cure. It's a truly horrible, heartless and cruel ideology that despises human kind, especially the female half, and I believe its presence on this planet is a stain on all humanity; and when it finally passes, as one day it surely must, because nothing that unnatural and inhuman could possibly last forever, its memory will linger like a bad smell, as a warning for generations to come; like a ghostly gibbet by the roadside of history, a bony finger of death, beckoning us back to a more brutal and primitive past. It'll serve as a grim reminder of what happens to human beings when religion is allowed to go too far."

"Once again we see Islam self-detonate (if you'll pardon the expression) and show once again why it's about as welcome on this planet as an asteroid. Once again we see thousands of Islamic nutcases take time out from beating up their wives to show their sensitive side. How? By smashing up the towns they live in, egged on by clerical ignoramuses whose motives are even lower than the literacy level of their followers. And once again we in the civilised world are being urged to censor ourselves out of respect for a religion that violates the human rights of half the people on the planet and that doubles as a political ideology indistinguishable from Nazism. It would be funny if it wasn't so obscene."

"To call these riots infantile and imbecilic is to give them a dignity they don't deserve. They can only be described as Islamic. Let me get this straight. We're supposed to show tolerance and respect for a religion that doesn't know the meaning of either word and goes out of its way to prove it every day? We're supposed to amend our values to accommodate a religion that accommodates nothing and nobody? Dream on, people. It's not going to happen, because with Islam it's always a one way street. We've learned that lesson the hard way. We can't afford any more tolerance and respect. We've been sucked dry. And we've become weary of manufactured Islamic grievance. It's such a bore that now when we hear some bearded buffoon or some bag-headed bimbo telling us how offended they are we can't even be bothered to laugh any more."

"They say great minds think alike. That's also true of tiny minds, and it's especially true of closed ones. I'm always impressed by students who know so much about the world they feel no need to listen to anyone else's opinions, aren't you? Especially when they feel compelled to actively shout them down. That's confidence for you. ... Anyone who's unwilling to hear an opposing opinion has no business attending a university, unless they're planning to graduate with honors in bigotry. And they have no business teaching at one either. There's nothing liberal, intelligent, enlightened, civilized or progressive about shutting somebody up because you don't want other people to hear their opinions. Who are you to decide who should and shouldn't be heard? Who made you emperor? It's not only an incitement to public disorder, it's a form of assault and a violation of the civil rights of everyone around you."

"The free exchange of opinion and information is the very lifeblood of the society to which you owe everything you have. It's the oxygen that gives us clarity and strength. Restricting it is like closing down synapses in the collective brain. It's an act of sabotage and nobody has the right to do it any more than they have the right to arbitrarily ration water or air. No judge, no politician, no police officer and certainly no braying mob of sanctimonious, privileged, middle-class, left-wing, students who think they know best for everyone."

"Surely the most comically deluded people on this planet, outside creationists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists, are idealistic left-wing gay people who think they share a common cause with Muslims as two oppressed minorities, when opinion polls tell us that most Muslims are disgusted by homosexuality and think it's completely unacceptable. Among U.K. Muslims, disapproval is 100%. Admittedly, that's from a sample of only 500 people, who all happened to agree unanimously, but that's hardly representative. After all, not all Muslims were included, so we can't reasonably extrapolate anything from it without being racist. That's a relief. I thought we might have to face an unpleasant truth there for a second, didn't you?"

"I think we've turned into a society of craven cowards. I hope that doesn't offend. Actually, I hope it does offend … because, you see, I can still remember the shock of the Rushdie Affair 25 years ago. The very idea that anybody could be killed for writing a book was surreal and horrific. Now we take it for granted that if you say the wrong thing about the religion of peace you'll get death threats and you might actually be killed, so you keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you. All for the sake of tolerance and diversity, of course."

"Why am I anti-Islam? Well, for the simple reason that Islam is anti-me, and it's anti every fundamental value I hold... People say, "Well, you only focus on the bad things about Islam", and yes, I have to admit that if you ignore the bad things — the aggressive separatism, supremacism, and social intolerance, the relentless special pleading and phony grievance mongering, the psychopathic level of misogyny, the honor killing and genital mutilation (sanctioned by the Prophet, incidentally), the rabid gay and Jew hatred, the intimidation and censorship, and the constantly present threat of violence over social issues — well, there isn't much wrong with Islam, it's perfectly kosher (if you'll pardon the expression). The trouble is, when you take these things away, there's nothing left."

"Here in Europe we're very big on human rights, unless somebody claims the fundamental human right of free expression, and then we have a problem. Recently a Swedish politician was convicted of hate speech for correctly connecting mass Islamic immigration with the high level of rape in Sweden. ... Mass Islamic immigration has turned Sweden from one of the world's safest countries for women into the rape capital of Europe. ... Everybody in Sweden knows this is happening, but they pretend it isn't because they're so terrified of being called "Islamophobes" and racists, and with good reason. We've seen what happens to people in Sweden who won't embrace the official multiculti lie. They can expect to have their identities hacked, and to be publicly fingered for reprisals, which could mean being socially ostracised, losing their job, or being physically attacked by far-left thugs who feel entitled not only to smash the opinions of those they disagree with but to smash their skulls for holding those opinions, all in the name of tolerance, of course."

"When people are afraid of the truth they've got nowhere to turn. All they have at their disposal is censorship and denial. And Swedish politicians are so deep in denial you can only feel pity for them, because you know that in some dark chamber of their subconscious these wretched people know what a terrible thing they're doing, and they know that history is going to revile them and their entire generation for it. But they just can't face up to it. Psychologically, they are simply not big enough as people to acknowledge, let alone confront, the enormity of their mistake. They've backed themselves into an ideological corner where their only option now is to double down on the insanity and brazen it out until the bitter end, while criminalising anyone who draws attention to it. Whatever social upheaval it may cause, and whatever the cost to Sweden's women, mass Islamic immigration must continue. Any restriction would be an admission that there's a problem, and that would fatally undermine everything they're so desperately pretending to believe in... If you say there's a problem, you'll be treated as a criminal – which means that there are now two problems. One: the Swedish people have an aggressive social cancer growing in their midst; and two: they're not allowed to talk about it."

"Swedish politicians are not right about much, but you get the impression they think they're setting the example to the rest of us. And they are right about that. Their recent bizarre decision to recognize 'Palestine' – a country that doesn't exist – is somewhat poignant: as the way things are going Sweden itself won't exist much longer. Seems like every piece of news that comes out of that country is more disturbing than the last. But, then, they have been committing cultural suicide so enthusiastically for so long there is now almost a sense that a tipping point is being reached and that, for the rest of us, it's really just a matter of watching the grim process unfold as we thank our lucky stars we don't live there... In Sweden today, democracy is a threat that must be neutralised, just as free speech is a threat that must be criminalised. Like the old Soviet Union, they can't afford to allow either because they're attempting to create an artificial society from a blueprint that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And they've given it an almost theological significance so that a dogma has been established, and this has led, inevitably, to heresy becoming a problem. So now anyone in Sweden who expresses the wrong opinion about Muslim immigration is liable to be arrested, that's if the police are not too busy running away from violent Muslims."

"When will Sweden be full of Muslims? The short answer is never. They've talked themselves into such a tight corner, and so demonised anyone who questions mass immigration that they could no sooner put a limit on it now than they could click their heels and give a Nazi salute. It's out of the question. So on and on it will go, forever. A hundred thousand or more a year, every year, year after year. It will never stop. Not even when there's a mosque on every street corner blaring the call to prayer five times a day through loudspeakers into your face. That's what's coming, Sweden, and nobody deserves it more than you. Oh yes, you're a real shining "progressive" beacon, all right, a real example to us all – like the guy who dives head first into a thimble of water is an example to us all. ... You deserve to see your culture destroyed. You're clearly not worthy of it. You deserve what's coming, but your children and grandchildren don't, and they're the ones who will pay the price for your irresponsible stupidity and cowardice. They will curse your memory for what you've done to them, especially the female ones, you nation of traitors, you society of lemmings, you ship of fools."

"Jews abused and attacked on the streets of European cities... Muslim mobs attacking synagogues... Nobody gives a damn about Jews and they never have, which is why the Holocaust was allowed to happen in the first place."

"if a Swedish news editor was ever gang raped by Muslim immigrants it would be hard not to laugh."

"“Transgender” is a fashionable mental disorder being presented to kids as a legitimate medical condition. Shameful."

"The marauding third world savages who terrorise people in their own homes are victims now? Tell somebody who cares."

"Dear subhuman white people, you are the new niggers. Get to the back of the bus."

"The @guardian thinks it’s OK to facilitate an illegal invasion of Europe by hordes of violent fighting age third world savages. Every one of those NGO boats should be at the bottom of the Mediterranean."

"the rest of us shouldn’t be compelled to participate in the fantasy and pretend that men can become women and women can become men. They can’t."

"Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism in action."

"are not women. They are men with mental problems."

"This is absurd. There is nothing far-right about . is a far-left hate group on the same moral level as the thugs of #Antifa. Same views. Same stripe. They are the real fascists."

"This House of Commons is a house of frauds. They have destabilised our society by trying to cheat us out of the result of the most important vote any of us have ever taken part in. Political vermin is by no means too strong a term."

"Black privilege means that you get to take the knee, raise a fist, and smear millions of decent English people as racists."

"Western civilisation was not built on slavery. It was built on free thought, ingenuity, and enterprise. Our society was the first to outlaw slavery. Two centuries later we have nothing to apologise for, and we don’t need to compensate anybody for anything."

"Aside from the bullish, gross themes of Pat Condell's content, the way he delivers it is unnerving in the extreme. He sits expressionless in front of the camera and reads aloud his various pseudo-intellectual musings on religion and social culture. … He leers at you with his horrid, dead eyes, an icy, cold blue resting beneath two light-brown brows. White cropped hair, a marked, red and white face, an English flag of a man, fluttering gently in the breeze of his own bullshit. Watching him is like being trapped inside a frustrated old man's head, an old man with delusions of his own intelligence and a petty ignorance of the world surrounding him. You can feel the warm breath, made stale from the avalanche of pernicious tripe that tickles his tongue on the way out, lapping at your face. His mouth quivers with disdain. …I'm yet to find a video of his in which he doesn't resort to insulting "progressives" and making puerile, blanket statements about things he professes to know about, but actually doesn't."

"Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he's on our side."

"If the televangelists are guilty of producing some simple-minded, self-righteous Christians, then the atheist authors are guilty of producing self-congratulatory buffoons like Condell."

"Brash. Uncompromising. Brilliant. Hilarious. Pat Condell has found a simple formula for success: stating the obvious without restraining himself with the conventions of unwarranted piety. Pat flenses sacred cows, and after slicing away the fat and gristle of tired apologetics and mindless tradition, he exposes the hollow carcass of a culture's hypocrisy... and we laugh."

"I hope I don't intrude?"

"It ’s no matter what you do If your heart be only true, And his heart was true to Poll."

"Stately as a galleon, I sail across the floor, Doing the military two-step, as in the days of yore."

"They look quite promising in the shop, and not entirely without hope when I get them back into my wardrobe. But then, when I put them on they tend to deteriorate with a very strange rapidity and one feels sorry for them."

"Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as chaos."

"If I should go before the rest of you, Break not a flower, nor inscribe a stone, Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice, But be the usual selves That I have known."

"I don't understand Ethel. I don't, I don't really. She's one of my very best friends, Just about the best, nearly. She's an awfully nice girl, Ethel is, Dainty and refined, I mean she'd never do or say Anything unkind. But get her inside a stadium And she seems to go out of her mind."

"I was allowed to slave for them For ever and evermore. Oh, I was allowed to fetch and carry For my Three Brothers, Jim and Bob and Harry."

"George - don't do that."

"Nobody is safe. Deviate by a hair's-breadth from normal behaviour in her presence and you become a specimen in her collection. She has the ear to record every nuance of vour talk and the tongue to reproduce it."

"But the cruellest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn't. (23 March 2008)"

"Well, here goes. I LIKE those areas of hentai which depict acts that aren't illegal or sexually deviant. I LIKE seeing pictures of tits. I LIKE to drop momentarily into a little fantasy world where everyone is beautiful and blowjobs are offered in return for fixing the sink. And why not? I'm 100% red hot hunk of man, and all men like watching boobies jiggling around, when they're not lifting weights, grunting and messing around under the bonnets of expensive cars (the men, that is, not the boobies). So there. I've said it. I like hentai. Poo on you. (20 October 2003: Hentaising )"

"It all smacks of trying to have your cake and eat it, although I’ve never understood that phrase. I don’t know what else you could do with a cake. Hold doors open, maybe. (6 March 2006)"

"Rips in the space time continuum look a lot like vaginas. (19 April 2006)"

"Piss poo dangly shit arse fuck wee....Fuck cunt willy willy wank piss mung. (26 November 2004)"

"When you think about it, when you overlook the ingrained taboos of society and think for your own fucking self for once, it doesn't make much sense that murder is illegal when we still have no idea what death IS, exactly. For all we know the human body is merely a stopping-off point where we learn wisdom and patience in preparation for the next, ultimate state of existence, beings of pure light, at one with the universe and with minds encompassing a thousand galaxies. And for all we know, you only get to do all this if you die before you turn 40. In that case, being murdered could be the greatest thing anyone ever does for you. (5 October 2004)"

"What was your favourite single player Quake level? One of the forty identical greenish-brown castles or one of the forty identical brownish-green castles? (2 December 2004)"

"And then we come to the physics engine. Oh, the physics engine, for which so much praise has been sung. What they say is all true. It is fantastic the way you can pick up boxes, the way they fall, the way they tip over, the way they smash into bits when you hit them. (On Half-Life 2, 26 November 2004)"

"I know you can argue that the player is supposed to project themselves onto Freeman, but if that's the case, why give him a name? A backstory? An iconic appearance? All the other characters have known him for years, we can't really project ourselves because Freeman has a known history and reputation. Hell, he's the fucking messiah figure for the oppressed masses. (13 July 2006)"

"Starring Laurence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving, The Slightly Mannish Woman and A Big Keanu-Reeves Shaped Piece Of Wood! (On the Matrix Reloaded, 24 June 2003)"

"Yes, I have been harvested by mainstream media for whatever time remains for television to still be called 'mainstream' before the internet destroys it once and for all. (14 February 2008)"

"Games with ragdoll death animations just make it look even more ridiculous. One moment an enemy is strafing and firing at full speed, the next his entire body just goes limp like Mr. Scotty teleported his skeleton out of his body or something. (19 July 2007)"

"So I finally sold out and bought an Ipod the other day. I haven't sold out to the point that I'd spell it with a lower case I and a capital P like the makers insist upon, though. (5 June 2007)"

"You couldn't make this any smaller without needing a sewing needle and magnifying glass to work it. I'm tempted to see if I can swallow it, and belch the White Album all the way home. (On his iPod Shuffle, 5 June 2007)"

"All I can say is this: either every single member of that army had been promised a blow job of the Gods as soon as they got their queen back, or the Greeks invented brainwashing. (On the Greeks and the Trojan War, 31 May 2004)"

"Yeah, I haven't updated in a while. What are you going to do about it, motherfucker? Oh yeah, you know your place. (17 June 2006)"

"Today marks the completion of my twenty-third year on this foetid planet. Who would have thought I'd make it this long without dying of mercury poisoning or swallowing my own tongue or something like that. (24 May 2006)"

"I haven't really commented on the whole Steve Irwin thing. Since I live in the country he arguably embodied this seems like a tragic oversight. I mean, he was Australian, I live in Australia, he wrestled crocodiles, I pick my nose a lot, it was like losing a little part of me or something. But when that stingray broke his little heart and a nation was united in grief - or at least a media was - I kept conspicuously silent. I even had some prepared witticisms I could have used, like "I bet the crocodiles are pissed off that they never got around to it first" or "The guy who went for 'stingray' in the 'animal by which Steve Irwin will one day be killed' betting pool is pretty fucking happy right now". (16 October 2006)"

"The 'wemon' is a shy creature and bathrooms offer it comfort by reminding it of its native Sweden! Try to lure it out with a few styrofoam packing peanuts and scratch it gently behind the ears. (5 October 2005)"

"I'd just like to point out that Billy Joel looks like the result of a depraved breeding experiment between Ringo Starr and the tall bloke from Everybody Loves Raymond. (7 July 2004)"

"God damn X-Entertainment. God damn it for being so god damn interesting that I'd rather sit reading their god damn articles when I should be doing some god damn work. God damn them. God damn the doctor for putting me on these god damn pills that make me god damn drowsy and fucked up all god damn morning. God damn everything. Then god damn god damning. (18 August 2004)"

"Christians are a funny lot, aren't they? It doesn't seem to matter what their God does, they'll just keep on loving him regardless. (8 November 2003)"

"I am a consumer, part of the system of capitalism. To the corporations that control our lives, I am nothing but a huge mouth wearing designer jeans, just one of billions, to be cajoled or threatened with advertising into giving my money to people who already have too much. Although I vocally consider this a despicable state of affairs, I buy their loveless food and wear their manufactured garments. I am simultaneously antagonist and component. (7 October 2003)"

"Bush wouldn't be so bad if it was just him jumping up and down on the corpse of international diplomacy, but we've got Blair as well, kneeling behind him and rhythmically planting a kiss on each buttock with each of the American President's gleeful bounds. (17 July 2003)"

"So, Americans, then. Self-appointed vigilante defenders of the world, kind of like Superman, if Superman was retarded and only fought crime when he felt like it. (3 July 2003)"

"Anyway, if anyone reading this hasn't seen the Dark Knight yet, you officially aren't allowed on the internet until you rectify that. I think I should give it a few months and maybe watch it again on DVD before giving a definitive opinion, because being a massive cynic I'm immediately suspicious of any film that appears on the surface to be absolutely fucking legendary. (19 July 2008)"

"I used to be one of the guys, you know. I used to be another faceless contributor in a wall of opinion. I miss those days. (1 August 2008)"

"Guess you'd be better off going to the Escapist for regular ZP updates, hm? And why not click on some ads while you're there. (21 August 2008)"

"Women admire naked women as the kind of body they would like to have, while men admire naked women as the kind of body they would like to have tied down and squealing on the end of their dicks. (12 January 2005)"

"I love having my conscious brain deactivated by a mindless repetitive task and the rest of it drifting off into the wonderful lands of make believe. (3 April 2007)"

"Saying that a smoker inhales over 4000 chemicals is as meaningful as saying that fun runners pass over 4000 different kinds of rock, and because that rock may contain dinosaur fossils, said fun runners are at risk of velociraptor attack. (21 March 2007)"

"Quod Erat Demonstrandum, fuckers. (25 April 2005)"

"Sex is squalid, uncomfortable, and messy. (18 April 2005)"

"Did we learn nothing from Terminator 3? Apart from the fact that Arnold Schwarzeneggar can act in the same way that octopi can figure skate. (27 March 2005)"

"Nowadays, everyone seems to be emotionally dead, like zombies in pinstripe suits. Trudging to work each day to make a living, queueing up at McDonalds for their daily fuel intake, coming home to vegetate in front of the TV for hours on end. (22 October 2004)"

"I'm always one to concentrate on a person's good qualities - I've spoken up for Jeffrey Dahmer, for fuck's sake - but here I am at a loss. I cannot perceive a single redeeming feature in Paris Hilton... (15 November 2004)"

"Asking after my wellbeing is like asking after the wellbeing of someone in Sweden because a fire broke out in Portugal. Yes alright, Americans, go and look up where those countries are, I'll wait. (In reference to the fires in Victoria, Australia, 12 February 2009)"

"Don't you think it's weird how so many awards these days look like rough crystal formations freshly carved from the rock? Oh I guess you wouldn't know because YOU DON'T WIN AWARDS (25 April 2009)"

"So if you're still playing the game or care in the slightest about having the plot spoiled, try not to accidentally trip, fall forward and highlight all of the following text. (3 June 2009)"

"On the bright side, however, it means I get to stay at home and stare at a computer screen all day as opposed to go to work and stare at a computer screen all day. (On being sick, 15 May 2003)"

"So, Brussels have come up with a little thing called a European Constitution, which will unite all of the European Union into a single superstate, governed by a single government. There may be a problem with everyone speaking different languages and hating each other, but seemingly insurmountable problems have been solved in the past. Like Mount Everest, or making a film based on the Lord of the Rings. (14 May 2003)"

"I had written a beautiful piece for today. It was a rant about how much I despise Halloween. It was witty, well-written and a shining example of a writer at the top of his form. Then I tried to save it, and my computer crashed. So I guess you won't get to read it. Out of all the people in the world, I am the only one who had the opportunity to read my brilliant Halloween article, and now the text is already fading from my cruel, cruel short-term memory, the paragraphs lost in a whirling sea of data, never to be seen again. (31 October 2002)"

"...so come along and watch me fearfully from fifty yards away like you usually do. (6 September 2009)"

"Is it just me, or are the number of comments steadily going down each week? Am I just losing my touch, or has everyone wised up and realised that commenting on internet videos is viciously futile? (4 October 2009)"

"You know how it is, you go away for a week and all the work piles up like a big heap of mail holding your front door closed. (8 November 2009)"

"I heard a story that Guinness once decided to stop advertising. Everybody knew what Guinness was. Everyone who liked and regularly drunk Guinness wouldn't find out anything new about Guinness from TV spots and they were guaranteed sales as long as St. Patrick's Day existed. But you know what happened? Their sales plummeted. Very, very quickly. So next time you complain about adverts on TV or in the cinema or even on my online videos, remember that it wouldn't be necessary if you weren't all such flighty cunts. (4 August 2010)"

"The thing is, if you complain to me about it, you are basically complaining to the pig because your sausages were undercooked. I know my name is on the front of the cover in big fat serifed letters, but I've got nothing to do with distribution and sales or anything to do with Amazon. If you are dissatisfied with their service, then complain to them. Repeatedly. With sticks. (16 September 2010 in regards to Mogworld issues on Amazon.com)"

"A 'relationship' occurs when two people run out of things to say to each other, so they shut each other up by putting their genitals in each other's mouths. A break up comes about when they run out of things to do with those, too. (11 November 2010)"

"Yahtzee was born in Warwickshire, England, on the day of the great storm of 1983. Twenty years later, when England had become too small to accommodate the five hundred kilometre-wide tumour growing out of the back of his neck, he moved to Brisbane, Australia, where a chance encounter with an enraged surfer caused the tumour to become detached. It has now gone on to star in a number of Japanese fetish videos, while Yahtzee occupies a treehouse on the edge of the city, struggling to learn how to live with corks around his hat. The enraged surfer tries to keep in touch, but Yahtzee never answers his phone. (About page)"

"Girls: Please do not offer yourself to Yahtzee. He found that this got old very fast. (Contact page)"

"Did you see that recent flick, Hollow Man? Good effects but the dialogue was crap. Kevin Bacon is a hot shot scientist who, together with his hot shot scientist mates, turns himself invisible, but then finds that he can't turn himself back. So he goes insane and decides to kill all his mates, blow up the lab and ride off into the sunset on a very confused horse. (Why it would kick arse to be invisible)"

"being invisible means you can immerse yourself in a crowd and start clasping boobs and buttocks, then leap aside and laugh as some poor chap gets a clip round the ear. Laugh quietly obviously. And changing rooms! You can sneak into changing rooms and sit right there in the middle of the place while pretty girls get wet and take all their clothes off. You could go and hide in the showers themselves, but since the water on your body wouldn't be invisible you'd have to rely on them not noticing a semi-transparent man appear in the corner. You could pretend to be a novelty glass statue, but you wouldn't be able to explain the developing glass stiffy. (Why it would kick arse to be invisible)"

"Kevin Bacon (or whatever the character's name was - I'd imagine his friends would call him that as a friendly jibe because he bears an uncanny resemblance to Kevin Bacon) (Why it would kick arse to be invisible)"

"This [article] doesn't mean that I actually want to be Lara Croft. In writing this I'm not admitting that I occasionally dress up in a tight top and khaki hotpants and prance around pointing two hairdryers at my dog. In this little article I am pointing out why, if you happen to be Lara Croft, that you should be very pleased with yourself. (Why it would kick arse to be Lara Croft)"

"Well, I know what I would do if I temporarily found that the minds of Ms. Croft and I had switched. Firstly I would dress up in all the clothes I could find in her wardrobe, place a full-length dress mirror in front of the shower, get inside, turn it on and take all the clothes off really, really slowly to the tune of "You sexy thang" by Hot Chocolate. Then I would hunt down my original body and the bewildered hot chick inside, throw it to the floor in the nearest cyber cafe and begin making mad passionate love to it approximately fifteen seconds before our minds were due to be switched back. Firstly, this would pander to my ego no end, and secondly, I would then wake up to find myself living the geek's dream - surrounded by computers and boinking Lara Croft. Score! Actually this isn't really a reason why being her would kick arse, this is more me being weird. (Why it would kick arse to be Lara Croft)"

"When she meets a powerful man she's more likely to try and blow him away than blow him off. Stop that erection right now, you sick, sick boy. Stop it! Concentrate, that's how! (Why it would kick arse to be Lara Croft)"

"[Downs Syndrome Winnie the Pooh] The minute I saw this in a catalogue I just fell about. It's so brave of Disney to introduce stuffed toys that represent serious illnesses in order to educate the little kiddies. Me, I just want this so I can make my very own 'Victorian Sanitarium' playset. Downs Syndrome Pooh will be kept perpetually in a bleak little cardboard cell, bullied by Doctor Action Man and Nurse Princess Leia, occasionally brought out to be brutally hosed down with cold water every week. I'm thinking of sending it to Hasbro. (Yahtzee's Christmas Wishlist)"

"[PDP100 Duck Popcorn Maker] Actually I don't really want this, I just wanted to show you it, as this is the most disgusting popcorn maker I have ever seen. Actually this might be good for my Victorian Sanitarium playset. He could be the weak-stomached young doctor who keeps throwing up when they bring in Downs Syndrome Pooh for more experimental brain surgery. (Yahtzee's Christmas Wishlist)"

"Apparently this is true, according to one The_Mad_Revisionist, who is incidentally the aforementioned one man who believes fervently that (a) the moon does not exist, and (b) there's a huge worldwide conspiracy covering this up. Amazing how times change; as little as a hundred years ago we used to keep loonies like this in big sanitariums where they get poked with sticks and hosed down with cold water every night. Nowadays, we just give them websites. Heh. I just realised you could make a half-decent Matrix parody out of this guy. There Is No Moon. (Meet the crazy moon man)"

"What's more, all these cars go at pretty much exactly the same speed, so you have twenty-odd machines going around and around a track patiently waiting for the one in front to make a cock up. Maybe it would be interesting if drivers made a cock up more often, slamming into walls with really impressive explosions and bits of twisted metal flying everywhere. But no, they train the gits too well. They should have every car being driven by a chimpanzee. I'd watch that. Fuck, I'd sponsor it. (Snormula 1)"

"The question that no-one ever asks in the Pokemon world is why that long-dead illustrious and ethical human being, having created the technology to store big things in very small things, decided to use this gimmick the way he did - storing potentially deadly ferocious animals with magic powers in a little thingy that you can hang off your belt. Because he wanted the power, that's why. He wanted to know the ecstasy of holding five deadly creatures round his waist. He probably got off on that sort of thing, the sick weirdo. (Why it would kick arse to be a Pokemon trainer)"

"Oh, and for the benefit of those people who think I haven't been English enough in my recent articles: Bum bollocks tosser cor blimey guvnor eccles cakes apples and pears god save the queen fish and chips I hate yanks etc. (More from the Poetry Corner)"

"Because as any nerd will tell you, our greatest weapon in the ongoing battle against those buff sporty types and the suave prettyboys are the Nerds With Girlfriends. Nothing infuriates them more. (Person Without Girlfriend)"

"Most sensitive part of the male human physique, and he places it in almost the exact geological centre of the body, right between the legs, dangling down in it's own special bag. He might as well have painted them fluorescent orange and made the hair above it grow into the words 'your foot goes here'. (Where God Went Wrong)"

"[begin list of sophomoric puns] I bet he'd find a place up the chimney of any woman. He's certainly good at filling their stockings. Trouble is, he wouldn't be much good as a lover as he can only come once a year. [end list of sophomoric puns] (Why Chicks Dig Father Christmas)"

"No book critic has ever tried to assess the Old Testament. Maybe they should. I did once. It's a crap story and it's very badly written. (Where God Went Wrong)"

"Ha, ha, ha! Never let it be said Americans are unconcerned about foreign countries. You're so nice to us you very kindly elected a complete vegetable as your president, so we can all point and laugh! (My Tribute to the U.S.)"

"You know what's so great about junk food? Fat people who eat too much die young from cholesterol poisoning! It's a problem that solves itself! (My Tribute to the U.S.)"

"I have a very patchy memory of my childhood. It's one of the things about myself I'm most proud of. (More From the Poetry Corner)"

"We've learned that you should never trust English professors who stick computer chips in their arms, breakfast cereal mascots, Stephen King, the Borg collective, vegetarians, Christians, Microsoft Word helpers and people who put five exclamation marks on the ends of their statements. (I'm Off)"

"I once saw some magician bloke turn a carton of orange juice into orange juice, beer, milk, coke and ginger ale. That makes him five times better than Jesus or something. (Why it Would Kick Arse to be Jesus)"

"The cake is vanilla; I asked for chocolate; The tears They will not stop. (Prince of Persia: Emo Warrior)"

"People followed Jesus, I think because they wanted to have sex with him. Ho yes, they so wanted some of that holy jiggy-jiggy! (cough) sorry. (Why it Would Kick Arse to be Jesus)"

"Also, you can't prove that there isn't a ghost of Bagpuss hovering right behind your head as you read this. He's right there, man! No, he disappeared right after you turned your head. I swear he's there. Look, he's back again now! (Meet the Crazy Moon Man)"

"Yes, let me tell you about my favourite Disney character. And afterwards, let's all have a magical tea party under the enchanted tree, then we can have a delightful game of pooh sticks, you fucking pansy. (The 100 Questions)"

"In answer to your first question, of course God was good in bed! He's perfect in every way! God not only knows the secret path to the clitoris, but he's also aware of a little nerve just underneath the right shoulder blade connected directly to a lady's pleasure centre! (Ask Yahtzee 3)"

"Greek mythology tells us that the Gods invented woman as a punishment after man got a hold of some stolen goods. Obviously, this was just the mythological explanation given by the primitive early men to explain the real origin of women, which was this: THEY CAME DOWN IN SPACESHIPS. Yes, all women are space aliens who have come from a far-off galaxy to enslave mankind. (Ask Yahtzee)"

"The national dress of Great Britain is, from the ground up, a pair of Roman sandals, a kilt, a gunbelt, a t-shirt bearing the likeness of Mr. T, a garland of flowers and a horned Viking helmet. (How to be British)"

"Perfectly coloured to be camouflaged totally in a 60's living room, the zebra has powerful legs and a thirst for blood! (Fight or Flight?)"

"But now I play Silent Hill too much, because it is the most awesome series in the world that proves if proof be needed that the Japanese are just so much better at this whole 'horror' thing. (Silent Hill Showdown)"

"There's nothing I enjoy more than sitting down with a big piece of marmite on toast and reading through the archives of a good webcomic. The only problem is that the good webcomics are all hidden behind pile upon pile of testicle sweat masquerading as entertainment. (The Only Good Comics on the Internet)"

"Keep in mind that this is only my opinion, but also keep in mind that I'm always right. (The Only Good Comics on the Internet)"

"Ah, spam. Where would we be without spam? I'll tell you where. We'll be living in a lush, verdant paradise, unspoilt by rejected technology, where men and women of all creeds and races can join hands and sing for the sheer joy of being alive. (The Spam Man Cometh)"

"How long does it take to shut up a baby? How long does it take to run through the possibilities? Are they hungry, sleepy or sitting around in a pile of shit? If it's the second option I'm sure we can all sympathise. But how long could the process of elimination take?..... I'm sure it's wrong to wish death on a baby, but for the first time in my life I'm actually trying to awaken some kind of latent psychic ability I could use to will the life from the little pillock. Or, fuck it, maybe I'll just walk over and wring it like a flannel. (Travel Notes)"

"The presence of The Sean has a tendency to taint a film, I find, because he is never his character; he's always just The Sean. (The Leauge of Extraordinary Gentlemen)"

"Ah, those were the days. David Bowie, Status Quo, The Beatles ... no end of artists I could say I enjoyed in order to sound clever and pretentious. (The Dark Side of Beatles Songs)"

"...you could pick any two writers of equal skill, have them read each other's work, and they would both instantly proclaim each other the champion. Unless one of them happens to be Stephen King, because he's a jerk. (God Ran Out of Faces)"

"Michael Atkinson vows to continue to 'fight' violent media. Which seems a bit like trying to turn the tide back with a water pistol. (20 January 2010)"

"I don't post on forums or comments for the same reason I don't attempt to french kiss pneumatic drills. (24 January 2010)"

"The zip on my wallet broke, sealing the money inside. How am I supposed to buy a new wallet? (29 January 2010)"

"Developers usually know their game's flaws better than anyone. Deadlines and publisher meddling are why they don't get fixed. (4 February 2010)"

"The only thing worse than being single on Valentine's day is being single on Valentine's day while living with a couple. (14 February 2010)"

"Humanity will be forever at war as long as there is no common enemy. World peace demands a new Hitler. (16 February 2010)"

"There's something oddly satisfying about coughing up a particularly big mouthful of phlegm. Could almost let you skip breakfast. (1 April 2010)"

"I feel bad when I'm the only person on the bus. It's like I'm the only person who showed up to the driver's birthday party. (28 June 2010)"

"I'm not misogynist. I resent that. I hate women, yes, but only because I hate everyone. (25 June 2010)"

"A comment on Mogworld's Amazon page has already declared it to be terrible. Proof that future time travellers are among us? (12 July 2010)"

"Last night at the bar someone asked me to say something 'hot and sexy'. All I could think of on the fly was 'Hayden Christensen'. (7 September 2010)"

""Hey, mister professional game critic, have you ever heard of this obscure game called 'Deus Ex'?" This is why I hate reading my email. (12 September 2010)"

"So I'm eating Subway this evening when a beetle flies down and burrows into my sandwich. Never a bad time to start losing weight, is there. (6 October 2010)"

"Valentines card idea: "You are my iron lung. Let me come inside you and breathe heavily." (10 October 2010)"

"The strippers in Duke3d iPhone don't get their tits out. Fuck off. That's like cutting Aeris' death out of Final Fantasy 7. (24 November 2010)"

"Rest assured, Mogworld's not being entirely released online. Just the first part. I would still like your money. That would be lovely. (16 December 2010)"

"But as any sixteen-year-old sweatily bringing a Playboy up to the counter of a newsagent's expecting everyone in the room to suddenly point and start screaming like the guy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers will tell you, titties become considerably more satisfying when you have to work for them. (26 December 2010)"

"Thinking about morality. If you had to choose, would you save one baby or five old people? What if the baby had a Hitler moustache? (31 December 2010)"

"If you honestly need the calendar to instruct you to show affection to your partner then what kind of loveless nightmare are you trapped in (14 February 2011)"

"Idea for movie: alcohol-based LXG-style crossover in which buddy heroes Jack Daniels and Jim Beam sail around the world with Captain Morgan. Jack's girlfriend is called Midori and she likes having sex on the beach. Their smartmouth talking pet is the Famous Grouse. (2 June 2011)"

"I've made a lot of box art do a lot of horrible things over the years in the name of critique. SOPA could stop my dirty foreigner ways. (18 January 2012)"

"Winning the lottery is like slipping your hand into the bra of the most beautiful woman in the world, then getting it stuck and having to saw it off at the wrist. (Chapter Eight)"

"I rolled my eyes at Rose, but she returned the look with a scowl which suggested that, if we ever got out of this alive, she would have some issues to address with myself and my polaroid camera. (Chapter Nine)"

""Those shells don't look very comfortable, miss." - Edited from the original script of the Little Mermaid (Chapter Eleven)"

"Maybe it was the quest that mattered most, not the outcome. (The Last Bit)"

"The curtains were drawn, and the only source of light - indeed, the object to which my attention was suddenly exclusively drawn - was a lit candle on the kitchen table, that had probably originally been shaped like Snoopy but was now a mass of melted rivulets, as if Snoopy had fallen victim to some kind of flesh-eating virus. (Chapter One)"

"It was as we were sailing out onto the wide chinchilla sea that I noticed how every chinchilla looked exactly like Marlboro, the chinchilla I had owned as a ten-year-old and which I had put inside a popcorn machine to see what would happen. Then the boat ran aground on the biggest chinchilla ever. (Chapter Two)"

"At this time I was hesitant to venture into the greenery, because I wasn't keen on the possibility of having spiders the size of basketballs drop onto my face from overhead branches and refuse to let go. (...) Hunger pains were moving to the 'excruciating' stage by mid-morning. After a last-ditch attempt to extract nutrients from filling my mouth with sand, I decided that, if a big spider the size of a basketball dropped onto my face and tried to eat it, I would eat it back and we could turn the whole thing into an exciting competition. (Chapter Two)"

""I'm going on a picnic," went Penfold. "And I'm taking anthrax, beer, coffee, doughnuts, estrogen, flamingoes, glue, horses, ink, jelly, Knackwurst, lemonade, murder and Nurofen." (Chapter Fifteen)"

"Games should be remembered, not remastered."

"I’d like the power to make things die with the power of my mind. Not because I have any specific use in mind for it; I just think it’d be useful to have for difficult social situations. Like, if you’re trying to sleep on a plane and a bloke three seats down is laughing really loudly at a film. Or if someone’s trying to make me say something nice about their hideous baby, it would be a good way to change the subject. But then again, that’s really just replacing one awkward social situation with another."

"...at the end of the day, nothing makes me feel more positive than something I can get really pissed off about."

"If you don't give a shit then you can only be pleasantly surprised, and I've been burnt too often by disappointment to fall for it again."

"'Medium,' 'Large' and 'King Size'? What the fuck is that? How the fuck can 'Medium' be the smallest? Do you even know what the word 'Medium' means? This is why you're all so fat, you bunch of road sign-shooting Yankee pillocks."

"My secret? Hm. Well, I think the secret is this. Don't come up with a really ambitious twelve-CD monster for your first project, because it'll be doomed very quickly. For your very first release, make something small. Put as much effort into it as you can muster, but don't feel pressured. Then, for every subsequent release, push yourself just a little bit harder to make a better product. By the time you've churned out your sixth or seventh, you'll have a pretty solid reputation."

"Ctrl+Alt+Del is the Rubbish King, sitting proudly on a throne of rotting meat."

"My main inspiration is sardonic British TV critics like Charlie Brooker, whose excellent show Screenwipe is fully on Youtube, and I recommend everyone watch it. He used to write for a PC magazine I read fanatically as a child. My own style is a mixture of him, possibly Douglas Adams, and internet writers like Seanbaby, Old Man Murray, or Something Awful. I’m such a rip-off."

"I believe in being cruel to be kind. I love gaming, I have done all my life. I want to see it lifted in the eyes of the general public above how they view it now. Pottering endlessly about with the same dreary plots and game mechanics isn't helping any of us evolve."

"Evoking fear is, in itself, an art form – and nothing in the entire history of storytelling has explored it better than video games."

"Consider how The Dark Knight got away with a rating of PG-13 in the US by skilfully not showing any blood. Does that make it any more suitable for children? Or will there be a generation of youngsters haunted by visions of white-faced sadists brandishing pencils?"

"Since I long ago decided that I hated kids and never wanted to have them, my reproductive instinct has transferred to my creativity, I've always wanted to create works that will ensure I'm remembered after I die. I don't think I've done that yet, though."

"You're never alone when you're totally self-absorbed."

"I seem to have gathered a reputation for being a jerk in real life, because frankly fans make me uncomfortable. Complete strangers come up and talk to me like they've known me their whole lives, and for that reason I can seem a bit stand-offish... No, the whole "fan" thing confuses me."

"Religion should be something you keep within the confines of your own head, and we should all recognize how pointless it is to try and make other people see the fairies that live in your brain."

"I'm not a great judge of my own work, me. I'm constantly referring to the ZP Wikiquote page to find out for myself what the funniest line that week was."

"It's easy to make games for kids, they're dumb little shits."

"With infinite choice at our fingertips, we don't have to expose ourselves for an instant to anything that challenges our views if we don't want to. So the walls of the echo chambers grow stronger and stronger, until we only hear from the echo chamber next door when the shouty extremists are shouting, and their absurd views only make us more convinced of our own righteousness."

"Everyone's got the same insecurities as you Everyone's got the same insecurities as you Believe me it is true You are not alone There's no need to feel blue Everyone's got the same insecurities as you Believe me it is true Do not be afraid To show people the real you."

"At one point we got some German sausages for dinner, and my girl Anna was working the communal tomato sauce pump and she whacked it and it all squirted over my pants, and suddenly there was silence, and I realised that Muse had stopped playing, and the entire 20 odd thousand punters were looking at me, and suddenly I just threw my hands up and said ‘anyone for sauce?’ and everyone just burst into laughter and suddenly Peaches was there and she said ‘you’re alright kid’ and we high fived and then I crowd surfed all the way onto stage and Muse let me play the guitar solo for one of their songs and even though I’d never heard it I just winged it and it was awesome."

"Oh would I were a boy again, When life seemed formed of sunny years, And all the heart then knew of pain Was wept away in transient tears! When every tale Hope whispered then, My fancy deemed was only truth. Oh, would that I could know again, The happy visions of my youth."

"Forth we went, a gallant band— Youth, Love, Gold and Pleasure."

"There is a reason why you only see those adventurous types marching off into crocodile infested waters and uncharted jungles up the Congo. Marching into somewhere like Newcastle city centre on a Saturday night is too damn wild, that’s why. I became overwhelmed with a desire to go to Sunderland. And it’s not very often you hear someone say that."

"The criminal clearly wasn't expecting to find me there. He looked back at me with an expression of sheer balaclava written all over his face."

"A writer who denies the need for structure in his work is like a squash player who claims his brilliance removes the need for a wall."

"Stories are the architects of the human mind."

"In the distinctly human sense of our existence, people are made of language."

"The writer doesn’t push story into us, he withholds information in order that we draw his story out of ourselves."

"On summer evenings, before bathtime, my dad used to pick me up by the ankles and swing me round and round! Then one arm and one leg! Like an aeroplane - Wheeeee! We trashed that bathroom."

"Failure in any given subject is the first qualification towards becoming a teacher."

"If John Logie Baird had been born in 1971 would he have been a genius? The only thing we know with any certainty is that he wouldn't have invented the television. Some people believe he would have still established his genius; that he would have simply found another arena in which to work. I disagree. I think he would have been distracted from such brainy pursuits by all that television."

"Lying in bed, I abandoned the facts again and was back in Ambrosia."

"I turn over a new leaf every day," I said. "But the blots show through."

"[There's] too many people making too much muck and too much noise with too little space to do it in."

"Now, […] the world is beginning to look like what it is—overcrowded, dirty, noisy, smelly, and rapidly running out of resources. We're nearing the end of the rainbow, with not a crock of gold in sight."

"The 50s face was angry, the 60s face was well-fed, the 70s face was foxy. Perhaps it was the right expression: there was a lot to be wary about."

"Should not the Society of Indexers be known as Indexers, Society of, The?"

"Life is a campus: in a Greenwich Village bookstore, looking for a New Yorker collection, I asked of an earnest-looking assistant where I might find the humour section. Peering over her granny glasses, she enquired, "Humour studies would that be, sir?""

"During the time when I was doing Monitor for the BBC I found that if I wanted to show the detail of a painting it suffered pretty badly. You can get away with it provided the lighting is not too heavily contrasted and the details are not too minute. But by and large the electrical mechanics of television are still at such a primitive stage that almost any fine visual detail suffers and is rubbed away. If it weren't for the fact that it is the only medium available for transmitting things into a large number of homes simultaneously, no one would ever dream of using television as a didactic instrument for showing visual detail. It is fair to say that if you're showing diagrams on flat surfaces it is not too hard to read the detail. It is terrible, though, for showing any sort of depth—for example, if you're trying to demonstrate not an art object, but a relatively complicated thing like a skull."

"Perhaps I was too dumb, or just too interested in cricket or in girls, to ask myself any questions about religion. If I had not been, I might have, inevitably, asked myself questions that have troubled skeptics and unbelievers for as long as men and women have been skeptical or have lacked belief: "Is there really no God? And if there really is no supernatural dimension to the universe, why have so many people throughout history and in so many different cultures thought there was?""

"Paradoxically, some of the sources of disbelief are to be found amongst the arguments of believers. … Theologians often formulated the most dangerously skeptical arguments in their efforts to test the impregnability of their own faith, and in doing so, they unknowingly furnished atheists with ready-made weapons."

"[In casual conversation] The reason why I feel relatively indifferent to [the Anglican Church of England] is it's lost its power, and it's so desperately keen to solicit support that they're willing to throw God out of the window in order to retain it. God for the many of the Anglicans is nothing more than a sort of awkward geriatric relative, kept upstairs, who might be embarrassingly coming downstairs, incontinently, and cause trouble."

"With thoughtfulness—and, above all, with literacy—thoughts themselves become subjects of discussion in a way that they wouldn't have been before they were written down. It's not until they're written down that they become stable enough to bear examination in the same way that physical objects themselves can bear examination."

"While the early deists were busy reconstructing Christianity, at the same time being very careful to avoid the accusation of atheism, the world of science had been steadily progressing."

"Ever since the Reformation, there's a sense in which the road to atheism was paved not with science, but with religious intentions."

"Although he never admitted himself to be an atheist as such, he was clearly and unarguably the most vividly elegant and eloquent skeptic of them all. I'm referring, of course, to the great Scottish philosopher David Hume."

"There were academics and theologians who spent hours calculating what they thought was the precise age of the Earth, on the basis of the Biblical account of it. And as early as 1650, James Ussher had come to the startlingly precise conclusion that the Earth was created in 4004 B.C. on October the 22nd—in the evening, apparently. What God had been doing that morning is still open to conjecture."

"There is one aspect of our own mentality for which it's difficult as yet to foresee what type of explanation would even be relevant. I'm referring, of course, to consciousness. The point is that although I have no reason to believe that my consciousness is implemented by anything other than my brain, I remain convinced that there's something impenetrably mysterious about the relationship between brains and thoughts. And you can understand, therefore, why it's so hard to imagine, let alone tolerate, the idea that the death of the brain necessarily leads to the end of the personal self—and this, of course, is the "trump card" with which religion has consistently played."

"At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall ALL the time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer."

"My relationship with my father had been on the proverbial fritz since the time I was fifteen and called the police to report him for child molesting. He had never molested me, but I wanted to have a party that weekend and needed him out of the house."

"I had to feign interest in all this nonsense until I could ask when I could come over and sit on his face. I didn't say that out loud, of course. I never say the things I really want to. If I did, I'd have no friends."

"Are you there vodka? It's me, Chelsea. Please get me out of jail and I promise I will never drink again. Drink and drive. I will never drink and drive again. I may even start my own group fashioned after MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but I'll call it AWLTDASH, Alcoholics Who Like to Drink and Stay Home."

"Obviously, if I was serious about having a relationship with someone long-term, the last people I would introduce him to would be my family."

"Most men would never tell a girl her Pikachu smells like a crab cake. It's just not done. But they would have no qualms about telling their guy friends. Similarly, if you're a guy and you pull your pants down, and the girl you're with immediately starts text messaging her friends, you have a small penis."

"He laid into me with the same gusto as a right-wing political pundit on the O'Reilly Factor defending President's Bush right to vacation six days out of the week."

"The part that wasn't a jackpot was his baseball mound of red pubic hair that looked like it had literally been attached with a glue gun. I couldn't believe how much there was, and wondered how he had never heard of scissors, or--more appropriate for that kind of growth--hedge trimmers. I didn't understand what porn he was watching to not be aware of the trimming that was happening all across the world among his compatriots. I'm not a finicky person when it comes to pubic hair maintenance and I certainly don't expect men to shave it all off, leaving themselves to look like a hairless cat. That's even creepier then than seeing what Austin had, which could really only be compared to one thing: A clown in a leg lock."

"It became clear when I got in my car that Persians are only really good for two things. Oil and hummus."

"Si la Gestapo avait les moyens de vous faire parler, les politiciens d’aujourd’hui ont les moyens de vous faire taire."

"Le capitalisme, c'est l'exploitation de l'homme par l'homme. Le communisme, c'est le contraire !"

"Les psychiatres sont très efficaces. Avant, je pissais au lit et j'avais honte. J'ai été voir un psychiatre et ça va mieux. Maintenant, je pisse au lit mais je suis fier."

"Tu sais ce que c'est qu'un sandwich polonais ? c'est deux ticket de pain avec un ticket de jambon au milieu."

"Le communisme, c'est une des seules maladies graves qu'on n'a pas expérimenté d'abord sur des animaux."

"The 4D style, or cosmic comics and relativistic humor, is based on Einstein's theory of relativity which I came up with 20 years ago. 4D works use the idea of the fourth dimension, time, playing on such surrealistic and amazing subjects as motion relativity, space curvature and time dilation."

"Caricatures speak through visual language and are therefore understandable by all people. They trigger a laugh which is also an international language and reaction. Caricatures can decrease violence and converge cultures. They aim to promote peace, and teach us to be moderate and laugh at our problems."

"As long as copyright is breached in Iran and international works are being freely published in magazines and newspapers, no one feels any need for Iranian works."

"Politically I am neither left nor right! And this kind of political-ethical standpoint-- being in the middle-- usually brings about seclusion and isolation! But now I do not mind it anymore and, instead, I work more and more in my self-made solitude!"

"Paper is my best friend and paper seller is my worst friend!"

"The world starts with a Big Bang and finishes with a human-made atomic Big Bang!"

"We all laugh and cough with the same language and will die with the same language as well!"

"It is a strange paradox: Humans drown in the water, fish drown in the land."

"Erasers remind us there is no faultless human."

"Sweetness of life depends to its bitterness."

"Our lives consist of two numbers: date of birth and date of death."

"The death of our close friends and relatives proves that how close the death is to us!"

"I finally did not understand if we are living to survive or we are living to die!"

"The main thing missing from cartoons is today that old cartoons were cartoony. They did things you can't do in any other medium. Today's cartoons are very conservative and are more like live action. The characters look the same in every frame of the dang cartoon. The old cartoons squashed, stretched, and did crazy expressions. They were imaginative and crazy. A lot of cartoons aren't imaginative, they just say things. It might as well be radio. There is no point in having anything to look at in modern cartoons. But you can't say that about every cartoon. Genndy Tartakovsky's cartoons are beautiful. The closest thing now to what I'm saying is SpongeBob but even that doesn't go very far. It's like a conservative version of Ren & Stimpy."

"Illustration from the late 1900s up through the middle of the 20th century was absolutely amazing. In general, American culture was at its highest skill-wise in every aspect of human life in the 1940s. It's all been downhill since then. You just open an old magazine from the 1930s and '40s and look at the illustrations in it. There’s nobody alive that could touch the way they could draw back then."

"Forget the takes. Takes are cheap shots. Anyone can do a goddamn take. [...] You don't have to be a genius to draw a take. It's emotions—the full range of emotions—that works in Clampett's cartoons."

"Not all cartoon humor is just about having bugged-out eyes and tongues flying out of people's heads."

"Let me make this clear: Ren & Stimpy really is a children's show. It was made for kids. I'm not putting anything in there that I don't think a kid can watch, or should watch. It's completely a kid's show."

"Christmas is over and Business is Business."

"There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel"

"The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time."

"When the political columnists say 'Every thinking man' they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to 'Every intelligent voter' they mean everybody who is going to vote for them."

"Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody."

"Years ago we discovered the exact point, the dead centre of middle age. It occurs when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net."

"Nobody thought Mel Gibson could play a Scot but look at him now; an alcoholic racist!"

"Apparently they're going to bring in 'Super Asbos'. But 'Asbos' already sound too cool. Teenagers see them as a badge of honour. They should call them 'Gaybos' or 'Bender Badges'."

"I watched the footage of Saddam being executed, and it really made me think…is there nothing on the internet that I won’t masturbate to?"

"The Americans want to build a big tower on the site of September the 11th. Freedom Tower they're going to call it but now apparently they're worried and they're looking at ways to try and make it terrorist proof. I think they should have just build a giant fucking mosque. No one is going to fly into that are they?! Or even better, a runway."

"They say that the Olympics is going to rekindle English national pride. I mean, for £9.2 billion they could have written “Fuck off Germany” onto the moon."

"Apparently Jordan and Peter Andre are fighting each other over custody of Harvey, well eventually one of them’ll lose and have to keep him. I have a theory that Jordan married a cage fighter cause she needed someone strong enough to stop Harvey from fucking her."

"Ministry of Defence? At least in the old days we were honest, called it the Ministry of War. "Hello, Ministry of War, department of nigger-bombing. How can I help?""

"Religion's just what we thought before we understood what mental illness was. "A bush talked to me!" "Brilliant, what did it say? What did the bush say? Let's live our lives by what the bush said!" You stupid fucking cunts."

"You've got a blank face there pal, if you hold that expression for long enough in a hospital you'd get fucking switched off."

"There's two empty seats right middle - this is supposed to be sold out, where are they? I hope they're dead in a fucking car crash!"

"TV's a fantasy, right? It's a middle class, bourgeois fantasy. You look at daytime TV and how aspirational it is, then ask yourself "who's watching daytime TV?" Benefit cheats, and prisoners. They don't buy and sell antiques. They don't renovate houses to sell them on. They don't have stuff in their attic and if they did have stuff in their attic, it'd be fucking Shannon Matthews."

"There's a place for McCanns jokes, it's probably here. It's probably not on Dictionary Corner on Countdown. "And as we go into the break, we'd like to remind you that MADDIE is an anagram of I'M DEAD.""

"(on his previous "department of nigger-bombing" joke) That actually comes from a quote by Lloyd George. Lloyd George, when he was British Prime Minister, said "Britain reserves its right to bomb niggers". And that's an important quote, because once you hear that, you realise that Britain has always been racist from the top down. I thought it's worth using that in a joke for, it's worth using that word for. Guy came up to me after a gig in Glasgow, a white guy, and he said "I don't think that you should ever use the word nigger, in any context." And I said, "Well, you've just used it." And do you know what he said? He said what I kind of hope I would say in the same circumstances. He went "No, I didn't." See, you can't really ban words, right? Ricky Gervais got in trouble for saying "mong", I don't know why he did it, he didn't seem to be able to make it very funny. You can't ban a word! Even a horrible word like that. That's like saying, "Let's just burn one book. Let's just burn Mein Kampf. It's a horrible book, nobody likes it. At the point you burn Mein Kampf, you're a fucking fascist society. And you're not even a proper fascist society, because you've burnt the fucking guide book! You're on marching about in peach military uniforms, invading Poundland. (adopts German accent) "Why did you burn the guide book? Why did you burn the guide book, you fucking spastic?!" "You can't call me that, Herr Groppenführer. That word has been banned. You must call me der Nincompoop!""

"(Speaking about French and Italian tabloids printing naked topless photos of Kate Middleton) A family of billionaire perverts [the Royal Family] going nuts about a picture of a pair of tits. The hypocrisy of the British press, [mimicking British press] “oh we wouldn’t print these pictures of tits”. I had to go past pictures of tits to read about how you wouldn’t print pictures of tits. I went past good pictures of tits to read about some shit tits. The only reason Kate Middleton is pregnant is because her tits aren’t worth finishing on."

"Comic relief raised £8 million last year. Britain sold hundreds of millions worth of weapons last year to Africa. So next year, one country in Africa will get blown to smithereens, and the next country along will get a visit from Lenny Henry. And both will feel bitterly jealous of each other."

"(Speaking about Pope Benedict XVI's resignation) The Pope must have done something that even the Catholic church found unacceptable. My theory is that he fucked an adult woman."

"I wish the Queen had died the night before the Royal Jubilee – I wish she’d just fucking died. But they wouldn’t have been able to tell us that she’d died. They would have had to hollow out her body and get that guy who plays Gollum to wear it."

"American foreign policy is horrendous 'cause not only will America come to your country and kill all your people, but what's worse, I think, is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad. Oh, boo hoo hoo. Americans making a movie about what Vietnam did to their soldiers is like a serial killer telling you what stopping suddenly for hitchhikers did to his clutch."

"Hello you cunts, black power!"

"People get the wrong idea about me, they think I'm depressed or something - I'm not depressed. I don't wish that I was dead, I wish... that you were all dead."

"(Speaking about Comic Relief and charity) Look, there's a colonial side to British charity, it's true; look at Yemen, right? We're the number one provider of weapons and bombs and expertise to Saudi Arabia that they use to bomb Yemen, to engineer a famine in Yemen. At the same time, we're the number two provide of aid to Yemen - and why not? Life gives you Yemen, you give Yemen aid."

"At least Theresa May went, she had to go didn't she? Towards the end she had all the authority of the "Do Not Tumble-dry" label. She always had the charm of a fucking war crime. Towards the end her body language had gone; I didn't realise it was possible to limp with both legs. So now we've got Boris Johnson; an evolutionary dead-end of the Honey Monster. A bin bag of albino body parts. A cross between the Incredible Hulk and a Haribo fried egg... is the fucking prime minister! The Prime Minister! It's not just that he's the worst person for the job, he might be the worst mammal! And let's not forget how they create these people; they're created in the public school system, that's where they lose their empathy. They're forged in the crucible of hierarchical sodomy. That's why they can't get along, the last time the cabinet saw eye-to-eye it was over the back of a weeping first year. Incidentally, I'm not one of those people who thinks there's a paedophile ring in Westminster, I think it's probably more of a queue."

"You get these people, and they'll probably always be with us, who get offended by comedy. And I used to not mind until it occurred to me one day; most people who get offended at jokes watch porn! Like, pretty much all of them! There's someone right now watching torture porn going (mimicking someone masturbating) "I hope nobody makes a joke about a fuckin' swimmer's nose!" And then you get these people who defend comedy and say "oh this is a free speech issue", it's not a free speech issue; it's an artistic license issue. You're allowed to talk about it because it's not real on some level, right? There will always be people who won't get it, there's always those people who go "I think you'll find that if two blokes actually took a crocodile into a pub, there would be fucking carnage." But it's not real, so we get to joke about it. I think people sometimes get confused with how they use humour in their own life with what this is. So most people use humour as a form of politeness, as an ice breaker - this isn't that. This is sentences that end in a very surprising way."

"(Speaking about jokes he made about the 2012 Summer Paralympics Opening Ceremony) The one that papers hated the most was "The Saudi Arabian Paralympic team are mainly thieves.""

"I don't like people who lash out at jokes - at the same time, I don't like people who lash out at political correctness. I think it's lazy, and I think it sometimes encourages people to dismantle stuff that protects them. So I'll give you an example; there's a guy I talk to a lot in Glasgow, he's a homeless guy and he was an alcoholic - I suppose that's why I talk to him, because I was an alcoholic. (...) So I was talking to this guy the last time I saw him and I went "What would you say is your biggest problem in life at the minute?" and he went "Do you know what's my biggest problem, Frankie? It's all these fucking snowflakes in the media!" It can't be! It just literally fucking cannot be! You're sleeping rough in the streets of Glasgow, your biggest problem is actual flakes of fucking snow!"

"(Speaking about Ricky Gervais' joke about trans women) Now, I've got nothing but love for trans women, I've got nothing but love and support for trans folk in general. But they themselves would admit it's a very contentious issue that people try not to talk about, and Ricky Gervais obviously is a very powerful guy in show business. So nobody, really, who had the best years of their careers ahead of them... would tell you what they thought of that routine. Ricky Gervais, he does maybe fifteen minutes where he goes "well if a trans woman can say that they are a woman, I can say that I'm a chimpanzee, I'm a chimpanzee!" And my genuine reaction was; it's not that much weirder than Ricky Gervais saying that he's a stand-up comedian. I mean look, we know Ricky Gervais, he's a brilliant actor, he's a brilliant writer, he's not a fucking stand-up comedian! Just because Ricky Gervais self-identifies as a stand-up comedian, am I supposed to say he is one? It's fucking political correctness gone mad! Also, loving animals - brilliant, wonderful. Going on about loving animals? Suspect."

"I watched Hannah Gadsby's show Nanette. Now, it's a really great show, you should watch it if you get the chance. She talks a lot in it about comedy and her main point is that she feels that, herself as an oppressed person, she's often used her comedy to let the audience off too lightly - she makes a lot of good points. I think the problem with stand-up comedy is it simplifies stuff. It's hard to get at the truth when you've got to get a lot of regular laughs. And sometimes I think, am I trying to get to the truth here or am I just trying to tell funnier lies? So for example, I think she simplifies some stuff in her show. She says, stand-up comedy works by creating a tension in the audience, that's then punctured with a punch line. I don't think mine works like that, I think for me the tension arrives in the punchline. My uncle always said "do something you love, and you never have to work a day in your life" - he did heroin. (laughter) The tension arrives in the punchline and the setup line is almost supposed to be soothing, really. People say, don't they, that you only regret the things in your life that you don't do. I don't know who said that first, but it's someone who's never broken two corkscrews trying to get an unlubricated parsnip out of their arse. (laughter) The tension arrives... in the punchline."

"Sometimes I write stuff now and I go "am I really rebelling there, or am I just conforming?" Because our society works on conformity. People talk about racist cops; they don't select for racism. There isn't a test where they go "I'm afraid you failed; you answered several questions about the history of Motown correctly." They test you for conformity so that you'll just nod along with structural racism, and sometimes I say to myself "well, am I conforming?" So look, I compèred Live at the Apollo a couple of years ago - which is a type of conformity in itself - and at the time, you're supposed to do jokes on all these celebrities they've got down at the front and one of them was this really brilliant female boxer who I really admired and I'd followed her whole career. I had written this joke which I was really proud of which was "At the Olympics, in the women's boxing, they fought in two minute rounds which was good, because if had been three minute rounds I think I would have ejaculated my own pelvis." (laughter) And you know, I really laughed when I wrote that. I thought "that's fucking hilarious" because you'd never say that to someone's face, would you? And then as I was walking to the show I was thinking; people do say that kind of thing, people say that kind of thing in school - especially me. People say it now on social media, so am I just fucking conforming here? And what am I conforming with, a deeply sexist society?"

"Men don't have to assess women, that's why we can objectify them so quickly. On some level, we don't really give a fuck. A man can see a woman with a heavy cold and all he'd think would be "I would rattle that fucking phlegm loose.""

"I do think that getting a dog says something about you, it says; I'm so lonely that I could pick up shit."

"I'm gonna leave yous with one final piece of advice, and my advice is; never trust the super rich. What's the first thing they do when they get rich, they buy a yacht. Ever been on a yacht? It's like being in a two star hotel on fucking roller-skates. The only reason anyone would want to own a yacht is so that they can abduct children, sail them out to international waters, fuck them, and dispose of their bodies. And that's what everyone who owns a yacht... is doing. I don't care who it is, J. K. Rowling? I have to say, for legal reasons, that J. K. Rowling is not fucking and killing children in international waters... to the best of my knowledge. That's what's happening out there; the sea levels aren't rising, it's just the weight of dead, fucked kids. The sea isn't even salty."

"Do you know, there's now hotels for the super rich that are so exclusive that when you phone down and ask for an extra pillow, that's actually a code word. That's actually a code word for a prostitute. Imagine that, you phone down for an extra pillow, and a prostitute turns up. Now you have two prostitutes. And only one pillow to smother them with."

"Before I go, I want to leave you with this: Conservative voters, you have destroyed this country. We’re about to birth the first generation of babies that will be regularly woken by the nocturnal screams of their parents. And you did this. With your affordable four-wheel drives, your Coldplay albums, your canvas trousers, your NutriBullet, your rape pornography. Your James Corden, your Sky Atlantic, your mistress, your numb smile, your diazepam, your wanking glove, your weight gain, your constant googling "does this dream make me gay?". Your fear of buttons, your Amazon Prime, your unrealistic goals, your friend with terrible spinal injuries, your secret jealousy of all the attention he gets. Your constant fear of cancer, your dream of swimming with a dolphin who will at best feel complete indifference towards you. Your tutting at the news, your Gucci belt, the books you have pretended to read, your love of cock, your cock of love. Your daughter’s wedding, your first bike. Your suicide."

"There is a vegetarian option: you can fuck off."

"I've had a few medical problems this year: I'm now so old, that my pussy is haunted.(series 4, episode 1; What the Queen didn't say in her Christmas message)"

"Dear points of view, watching "Queer eye for the straight guy" made me think that if I made gay friends, they'd give me fashion tips. Actually, they fucked me."

"I thought it was sad, you know, that they had that pop concert to commemorate Diana. I mean, she didn't have much to do with pop music, did she? They should've done something that celebrated what was really great about her life: By staging a gangbang in a minefield."

"["Lines you wouldn't hear in a superhero movie"] What's that Joker, you'll be back? Somehow I don't think you will be."

"["Lines you wouldn't hear in a superhero movie"] Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Whatever it is it's heading straight for the World Trade Center!"

"[Talking about Richard Hammond's high-speed dragster crash] That should be the anti-speeding advert. It should be footage of Richard Hammond trying to remember his own wedding day.[Mimicking Richard Hammond] "She was wearing black... or was it red? Am I married?""

"The thing that nobody really said about Rebecca Adlington is that she looks pretty weird. She looks like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon."

"3 Million for the funeral of Margaret Thatcher? For 3 Million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person."

"When I was about 8 or 9, I was a massive Michael Jackson fan and I wish I had known at the time that I was his type."

"Can I just say, my routine about raping and f*****g Holly Willoughby was part of a very long routine about whether or not it's OK to do a joke about that, and I look at it from both sides, there are pluses and minuses."

"It would be peevish and ungracious after being taken to such a lovely supper in this Temple of Food, I know, but I am desperate to ask the question that begs to be posed: Just how fucking good can olive oil get?"

"Maybe I sound like some Victorian who felt that forty years ought to be enough for any man, but one of the marks of a live well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind."

"What humiliation, what disgrace for us all, that it should be necessary for one man to exhort other men not to be inhuman and irrational towards their fellow-creatures! Do they recognise, then, no mind, no soul in them — have they not feeling, pleasure in existence, do they not suffer pain? Do their voices of joy and sorrow indeed fail to speak to the human heart and conscience — so that they can murder the jubilant lark, in the first joy of his spring-time, who ought to warm their hearts with sympathy, from delight in bloodshed or for their ‘sport,’ or with a horrible insensibility and recklessness only to practise their aim in shooting! Is there no soul manifest in the eyes of the living or dying animal — no expression of suffering in the eye of a deer or stag hunted to death — nothing which accuses them of murder before the avenging Eternal Justice? …. Are the souls of all other animals but man mortal, or are they essential in their organisation? Does the world-idea (Welt-Idee) pertain to them also — the soul of nature — a particle of the Divine Spirit? I know not; but I feel, and every reasonable man feels like me, it is in miserable, intolerable contradiction with our human nature, with our conscience, with our reason, with all our talk of humanity, destiny, nobility; it is in frightful (himmelschreinder) contradiction with our poetry and philosophy, with our nature and with our (pretended) love of nature, with our religion, with our teachings about benevolent design — that we bring into existence merely to kill, to maintain our own life by the destruction of other life. …. It is a frightful wrong that other species are tortured, worried, flayed, and devoured by us, in spite of the fact that we are not obliged to this by necessity; while in sinning against the defenceless and helpless, just claimants as they are upon our reasonable conscience and upon our compassion, we succeed only in brutalising ourselves. This, besides, is quite certain, that man has no real pity and compassion for his own species, so long as he is pitiless towards other races of beings."

"You'll leave this theatre in a different state."

"Musalmans are separate from Hindus; they cannot unite with the Hindus. After bloody wars the Musalmans conquered India, and the English took India from them. The Musalmans are one united nation and they alone will be masters of India. They will never give up their individuality. They have ruled India for hundreds of years, and hence they have a prescriptive right over the country. The Hindus are a minor community in the world. They are never free from internecine quarrels; they believe in Gandhi and worship the cow; they are polluted by taking other people's water. The Hindus do not care for self-government; they have no time to spare for it; let them go on with their internal squabbles. What capacity have they for ruling over men? The Musalmans did rule, and the Musalmans will rule."

"The Urdu pamphlet Daî Islâm by Khwaja Hasan Nizami came into his hands. He immediately wrote in answer a pamphlet, the title of which clearly expressed his violent reaction: ‘The Hour of Danger: Hindus, be on your guard! The order has been given to attack and destroy the fortress of your religion in the hidden dead of night!’ (…) The Swami found out that the pamphlet was in fact only the introduction to a larger volume called Fâtamî Dawat-i-Islâm, which had been published as early as 1920, years before the shuddhi of the Malkanas started. In this the Swami saw proof that the Muslim reaction of the day was not merely against the shuddhi and sangathan movements, but rather was part of a sinister plot hatched years earlier. In his pamphlet the Swami went on to show how Nizami in his own introduction referred to his consultations with many Muslim leaders, including the Aga Khan, and how all had agreed that the publication of his work should remain a carefully kept secret within the Muslim community. The single purpose of the pamphlet was to describe all the means, fair and foul, by which Hindus could be induced to become Muslims. (…) In the conclusion of his own booklet, the Swami suggested some ways in which the Muslim threat could be countered. The openness and ethics of his methods stood in strong contrast with Nizami’s tactics.”"

"Swamiji had written a pamphlet, The Hour of Danger, in which he had warned Hindu society to be on its guard against mischievous Muslim machinations. According to his biographer, J.T.F. Jordens, “In his pamphlet the Swami went on to show how Nizami in his own introduction referred to his consultations with many Muslim leaders, including the Agha Khan, and how all had agreed that the publication of his work should remain a carefully kept secret, within the Muslim community. The single purpose of the pamphlet was to describe all the means, fair and foul, by which Hindus could be induced to become Muslims.... The Swami felt that he had uncovered a giant conspiracy. His pamphlet consisted practically entirely of quotations from Nizami’s work, showing how all Muslims should be involved in the fight for the spread of Islam: how pirs, fakirs, politicians, peasants, zamindars, hakims, etc. could be used and what their allotted task should be. It also stressed the need for secrecy and for an extensive spy network.’"

"In the meanwhile Khwaja Hasan Nizami of Delhi had brought forth a sensational book which purported to teach the Musalmans the quickest and most comprehensive ways of converting Kafirs to Islam. He sketched out how every Musalman from the lowest to the highest, from the fallen prostitute to the Vab'l, the Doctor, the Zamindar and the great Nawab could help the cause of Islam, i. e, the conv^sion of non- Muslims to Islam. the prostitute was required to exert her influence on her Hindu paramours for bringing them round to Islam, the bangle-seller was required to seduce Hindu girls, the Ekka driver to seduce away Hindu ladies and orphans, the Vakil and Doctor to influence their Hindu clients, the Zamindar and Nawab by their various influences to bring round the Hindu tenants under them to the cause of Islam. Strange to say, this mischievous book with its most wretched and fallen devices of propagating Islam which should have been torn to shreds, denounced and discountenanced by the sensible Muslim leaders, found silently the largest sale in the Muslim community for it fitted in with the mentality of the high and the low alike amongst the Musalmans,’who had already begun to work on the lines enunciated by it. The shrewd Khwaja was now an apostle of Islam and was seated high in the hearts of the Muslim community. The Nizam of Hyderabad fixed an allowance for him and other Muslim States and Zamindars follower! suit. Instances after instances of MohameHan Deputy Magistrates, Police and Excise Inspectors, Zamindars and Nawabs acting on these lines were discovered soon after. It was only when a translation of this book was incidently published that the eyes of the Hindu com- munity were opened and they soon found that secret kidnapping, abduction and seduction of Hindu girls and orphans by Muslim in almost every town of Northern Hindasthan had become the order of the day. Hindus individually and through their Hindu Sabhas now began to exercise vigilance, detect such dirty attempts, rescue Hindu widows, girls and orphans and bring the offenders to book."

"Of the many pamphlets and brochures in Urdu instructing Muslims in the ways of converting Hindus, only one may be examined to give an idea of the stuff contained in such literature. It is the Daiye Islam (Propagation of Islam) by Khwaja Hasan Nizami. Hasan Nizami was a sufi divine connected with the dargah of Nizamuddin Awliya of Delhi. The pamphlet teaches the Muslims the quickest and comprehensive way of converting Kafirs to Islam. The Khwaja exhorted Muslims of all categories from the highest to the lowest, to serve the cause of Islam by helping in the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam. In this missionary endeavour Zamindars and Nawabs, doctors and prostitutes, ekka players and bangle sellers were all invited to make their contribution. Muslim lawyers and doctors were to influence their Hindu clients to convert. Nawabs and Zamindars were to pressurize Hindu tenants under them to become Musalman. The prostitute was required to exert her influence on her Hindu visitors and admirers into becoming Muslims. The bangle seller was to seduce young Hindu girls and the ekka driver was to seduce away Hindu ladies and children. Such a recipe was neither spiritual nor edifying but it fitted with the Muslim mentality. The pamphlet recorded wide sale among Muslims. The Nizam of Hyderabad fixed an allowance for the Khwaja and other Muslims Chiefs and Zamindars followed suit. Muslim magistrates, police and excise inspectors and other influential officials were found working according to the plan laid out by this sufi devotee of Islam."

"We have seen how the sufi divine Khwaja Hasan Nizami in his Daiye Islam had instructed the Muslims on the ways to convert Hindus to Islam. His over-enthusiasm cautioned the Hindus. The instructions did not remain a secret, the book was translated and the Hindus found out how and why secret kidnappings, abductions and seductions of Hindu girls by Muslims in almost every town and city of northern India had become the order of the day. Hindus, individually and through their organisations, began to exercise vigilance. They began to undo such dirty attempts by rescuing Hindu girls, widows and orphans and bringing the offenders to book."

"A new type of wisdom, though within the four walls of Islamic fanaticism and day-dreaming, dawned upon Khwaja Hasan Nizami in the early years of the 20th century. He was no ordinary pen-pusher or paid mullah in some suburban mosque. On the contrary, he was a highly placed ‘divine’ in the hierarchy of Nizamuddin Auliya’s prestigious silsilã, and widely honoured in the Muslim world. He published in 1920 a big book, Fãtami Dãwat-i-Islam, in which he advocated all means, fair and foul, by which Hindus were to be converted to Islam. He advised the mullahs to concentrate on Hindu ‘untouchables’, and convert them en masse so that Muslims could achieve parity of population with the Hindus. He disclosed in the introduction to his book that he had consulted many Muslim leaders including the Agha Khan regarding the soundness of his scheme, and that all of them had agreed with the caution that the scheme should be kept a closely guarded secret. Unfortunately for the Khwaja, the scheme came to the notice of Swami Shraddhananda who exposed it, fought it tooth and nail, and frustrated it completely by means of his Shuddhi Movement."

"Gott zieht an einer Hand, der Teufel an beiden Beinen."

"Politicians have prolonged deaths. In a way, they begin to die the moment they leave office, and their deaths continue thereafter as each of their identifying characteristics – this bold new drive, that exciting new initiative – goes up in smoke, borne away on the winds of change."

"Reticence is not just an artistic virtue, but a human one. It acknowledges the depth of meaning to be found in words unspoken."

"The parodist is particularly prone to see products of his imagination wherever he turns. When I read newspaper columnists, I find it hard to believe they are not making fun of themselves especially for me. Or did I, in a moment of forgetfulness, write that piece by Germaine Greer or this piece by Jeremy Clarkson? If so, how could I possibly have been so cruel?"

"Signs are a peculiarly British disease, the result of too many bureaucrats overseeing too little Empire. It may well be that Britons never ever, ever shall be slaves, but it can't be long before we are obliged to carry signs making it clear that this is the case."

"My novel came before the story: I decided to write a novel before I knew what to write about. The story wasn’t burning in my heart or bursting to be let loose on the page. It didn’t feel like there was this one story that I had to tell. But I have always been fascinated by why people do the things they do. While trying to come up with ideas for my novel, I decided on a story that explored that."

"It would have to be one of those dangerous pieces of advice that people dish out all over the place. A particularly popular one is: Follow your heart. What if the person’s heart is leading them into a dungeon of doom? What if the person’s heart is filled with foolishness? ‘Follow your heart’ is not just unwise counsel; it is a recipe for anarchy. Imagine a world where each of us followed our heart to wherever it led us, without caring for the people around us or the laws of the land."

"Everyone can tell a story, but the skillful use of words is what I usually find captivating when reading a piece. The imagery. The alliteration. The emotion. The quotable quotes. Think Shakespeare. Think the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The skillful placing of word against word is what builds the masterpiece and turns a story into a memorable work of art. I often tell people how fascinated I was with Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. But while I have absolutely no recollection of the plot, I still remember how struck I was by her use of words. Her writing was pure art."

"I spit out everything onto the page, from beginning to end, and then go back and edit. I’m one of those people who like to tick off things on my to-do list; so, it helps me psychologically to get to the end first, and then settle down to revise."

"I Do Not Come To You By Chance is set in the world of Nigeria’s 419 scammers. It was a world I was very familiar with having grown up in South East­ern Nigeria. There were lots of people, lots of young men I knew who were going to, who were 419 scammers. So I wanted to write a story of how people from good homes, people from the kind of home I came from could become international financial terror­ists."

"If it was authoritarian for the Nigerian government to ban the use of Twitter, it was even more problematic for an American swivelling in a chair in Silicon Valley to poke their finger into the internal affairs of a sovereign African state."

"Although his position on the family tree could not be described in anything less than seven sentences, Odinkemmelu was introduced to us as our cousin."

"He brought out an it-was-white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped the sweat from his brows."

"Dear Friend, I do not come to you by chance. Upon my quest for a trusted and reliable foreign business man or company I was given your contact by the Nigerian chamber of Commerce and Industry, I hope that you can be trusted to handle a transaction of this magnitude."

"Is honesty an achievement? Personality is one thing, achievement is another thing. So what has your father achieved? How much money is he leaving for you when he dies? Or is it his textbooks that you’ll collect and pass on to your own children?"

"Odinkemmelu took his body odor away to the kitchen and returned with a teaspoon of salt."

"My tender triceps started grumbling"

"My father was a walking encyclopedia, and he flipped his pages with the zeal and precision of a magician."

"Cash Daddy’s cheeks were puffy, his neck was chunky, his five limbs were thick and long."

"Make una come see o, Graveyard don begin dey use perfume."

"At age seven, when it was confirmed that her right hand could reach across her head and touch her left ear, Augustina moved back to her father’s house and started attending primary school. Being long and skinny had worked to her advantage."

"Boniface — aka Cash Daddy — is an exuberant character who suffers from elephantiasis of the pocket. He's also rumored to run a successful empire of email scams. But he can help. With Cash Daddy's intervention, Kingsley and his family can be as safe as a tortoise in its shell."

"For much of his young life, Kingsley believed that education was everything, that through wisdom, all things were possible. Now he worries that without a 'long-leg' — someone who knows someone who can help him — his degrees will do nothing but adorn the walls of his parents' low-rent house."

"Being the opara of the family, Kingsley Ibe is entitled to certain privileges — a piece of meat in his egusi soup, a party to celebrate his graduation from university. As first son, he has responsibilities, too. But times are bad in Nigeria, and life is hard."

"When a tragedy befalls his family, Kingsley learns the hardest lesson of all: education may be the language of success in Nigeria, but it's money that does the talking."

"Unconditional family support may be the way in Nigeria, but when Kingsley turns to his Uncle Boniface for help, he learns that charity may come with strings attached."

"I think that if you're not a fan of irony as a form of expression, then a book that contains the line, "There's nothing so unattractive to a man as strident feminism" is going to make you cross. I also think that if we can't have a comic female character, if we can't laugh at ourselves without having a panic attack about what it says about women, we haven't got very far with our equality."

"I never imagined it would last more than a few weeks. I didn’t tell any of my colleagues it was me who was writing Bridget. I was working alongside a lot of very clever, seasoned journalists who were writing about New Labour and Chechnya and I felt stupid writing about calories and alcohol units and why it takes three hours between waking up and leaving the house in the morning, Then we started getting letters praising the column, I started boasting, "It's by me, meeeee!" and things snowballed from there."

"The jokes in Bridget come from something quite painful, which was her perception that she was in her thirties and she'd somehow made a mistake by not getting married yet and there's this ticking clock. But also there were good reasons why she was still single."

"I really wanted to smash the idea with this movie that there's a sexual sell-by-date for women and not for men, and stick it to the awful cougar stereotype. It makes me think of a woman in animal print leering over a friend of my son's, going, "Do you want a sherry, darling?" [...] It's got to stop because it's really not reflecting what's happening. For years and years we've seen Hollywood show men 40 years older than their partners, and it's not even discussed. Now movies are finally exploring a desire between younger men and older women that's reciprocal, not transactional. Bridget and Roxster both see something they want in each other — and Bridget having sex and being sexy is to be celebrated."

"One disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear."

"Hush, hush, Nobody cares! Has Fallen Down- Stairs."

"Dr. Strabismus (Whom God Preserve) of Utrecht has patented a new invention. It is an illuminated trouser-clip for bicyclists who are using main roads at night."

"Rush hour: that hour when traffic is almost at a standstill."

"The Doctor is said also to have invented an extraordinary weapon which will make war less brutal. It is described as a very powerful liquid which rots braces at a distance of a mile."

"The man with the false nose had gone to that bourne from which no hollingsworth returns."

"Erratum. In my article on the price of milk, 'horses' should have read 'cows' throughout."

"Mr. Justice Cocklecarrot began the hearing of a very curious case yesterday. A Mrs. Tasker is accused of continually ringing the doorbell of a Mrs. Renton, and then, when the door is opened, pushing a dozen red-bearded dwarfs into the hall and leaving them there."

"A Carvalho le molestaba tomar el sol como un lagarto, Pero Teresa demostraba una gran solidaridad con el termostato habitual en todas las mujeres, animales de sangre fría que necesitan el sol y son capaces de someterse a sus rayos con la beatífica expresión del comulgante o incluso con el éxtasis del mistico dispuesto a la entrega divina."

"Outside everything was uncannily visible in the light of the full moon, but here in the dark shaded alleys the night was conscious of itself."

"In her fantastic mood she stretched her soft, clasped hands upward toward the moon. 'Sweet moon,' she said in a kind of mock prayer, 'make your white light come down in music into my dancing-room here, and I will dance most deliciously for you to see.' She flung her head backward and let her hands fall; her eyes were half closed, and her mouth was a kissing mouth. 'Ah! sweet moon,' she whispered, 'do this for me, and I will be your slave; I will be what you will.'"

"The air seemed to be filled with the perfume of some bitter spice. Viola could fancy almost that she saw a smoldering campfire and heard far off the roar of some desolate wild beast. She let her long hair fall, raising the heavy strands of it in either hand as she moved slowly to the laden music. Slowly her body swayed with drowsy grace, slowly her satin shoes slid over the silver sand."

"Once more the music came. This time it was a dance of caprice, pelting along over the violin-strings, leaping, laughing, wanton. Again an illusion seemed to cross her eyes. An old king was watching her, a king with the sordid history of the exhaustion of pleasure written on his flaccid face. A hook-nosed courtier by his side settled the ruffles at his wrists and mumbled, Ravissant! Quel malheur que la vieillesse! It was a strange illusion. Faster and faster she sped to the music, stepping, spinning, pirouetting; the dance was light as thistle-down, fierce as fire, smooth as a rapid stream."

"On bitter nights in winter the moon called her and she came, when the breath was vapor, and the trees that circled her dancing-room were black, bare skeletons, and the frost was cruel."

"How madly she danced that night!"

"I shall leave this farm-house very soon. The people are all right, but they are people, and therefore insufferable."

"Anyone can prove anything except that anything’s worth proving."

"The baronet, in his old age, had been cast up by his vices on the shores of melancholy; heavy-eyed, gray-haired, bent, he seemed to pass through life as in a dream."

"He was so disrespectful that it was believed that he spoke truth."

"Modernity kills ghostly romance."

"Perhaps the prayer that is offered when the time for praying is over is more terribly pathetic than any other. Yet one might hesitate to say that this prayer was unanswered."