"I also said, 'You're in a dreadful position with wages going up at 8.4 per cent or more and inflation only by 3.5 per cent. We're pricing ourselves out of all the markets'. He [Lawson] said, 'Yes but it's very good electorally', to which I said, 'Yes but that's not the right view to take in the long run for the country'."

"I made Nigel Lawson Chancellor of the Exchequer – an enormous and to most people unexpected promotion. Whatever quarrels we were to have later, if it comes to drawing up a list of Conservative – even Thatcherite – revolutionaries I would never deny Nigel a leading place on it. He has many qualities which I admire and some which I do not. He is imaginative, fearless and – on paper at least – eloquently persuasive... I had by now come to share Nigel's high opinion of himself."

"Something always goes wrong when Nigel goes abroad."

"Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed."

"In some companies editors have been told not to sign up anything that can't be counted on to hit at least 50,000 or some other arbitrary figure. Another command from on high is 'buy only bestsellers'."

"An editor is a person who knows precisely what he wants, but isn't quite sure."

"An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write."

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

"Dick never thought that his bottle companion was a butt to aim at - only a friend to shake by the hand."

"I think Steele shone rather than sparkled."

"If there is a verity in wine, according to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character Dick's must have been! In proportion as he took in wine he overflowed with kindness."

"No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience…"

"A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it."

"Will Honeycomb calls these over-offended ladies the outrageously virtuous."

"There are so few who can grow old with a good grace."

"Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery."

"Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth."

"Of all the affections which attend human life, the love of glory is the most ardent."

"We were in some little time fixed in our seats, and sat with that dislike which people not too good-natured usually conceive of each other at first sight."

"A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscript."

"The insupportable labour of doing nothing."

"When you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him."

"The finest woman in nature should not detain me an hour from you; but you must sometimes suffer the rivalship of the wisest men."

"A little in drink, but at all times yr faithful husband."

"I was going home two hours ago, but was met by Mr. Griffith, who has kept me ever since. I will come within a pint of wine."

"I am come to a tavern alone to eat a steak, after which I shall return to the office."

"It was very prettily said, that we may learn the little value of fortune by the persons on whom heaven is pleased to bestow it."

"Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; to love her is a liberal education."

"It is to be noted that when any part of this paper appears dull there is a design in it,"

"Being misunderstood by someone is vexation. Being misunderstood by everyone is tragedy."

"The saws are sawing wood, But wood is also sawing the saws...The wood sawn into boards is fashioned into furniture. Saws just break and are discarded."

"Most of us can remember a time when a birthday — especially if it was one's own — brightened the world as if a second sun had risen."

"We welcome almost any break in the monotony of things, and a man has only to murder a series of wives in a new way to become known to millions of people who have never heard of Homer."

"There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas."

"In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence. One has to sit still like a mystic and wait. One soon learns that fussing, instead of achieving things, merely prevents things from happening. To be passive is in some circumstances the most efficient form of activity. You cannot command events: you can only put yourself in the place where events will happen to you. No impatient man has ever seen Nature."

"The art of writing history is the art of emphasizing the significant facts at the expense of the insignificant. And it is the same in every field of knowledge. Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother about."

"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."

"The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection, that premise is completely unproven…with many of the pieces you don't know who it's written by, and who the administrators are…one of the administrators overseeing the political coverage openly encourages people to vote for John Kerry…30,000 articles were created by a bot [an automated program that goes round causing havoc]…hyperlinks, bulletpoints and cut-and-paste press releases do not an encyclopedia entry make."

"Four facets may be distinguished in the rich personality of Dostoevsky: the creative artist, the neurotic, the moralist and the sinner. How is one to find one's way in this bewildering complexity?"

"Hostile portrayals of Jews are scattered throughout the writings of Fyodor Dostoyevski"

"I think the first discovery I made for myself which I didn't necessarily share with my family or my friends, but came upon myself, was Russian literature. I've always felt very much enthralled to writers like Dostoevsky, especially, and Chekhov."

"The real 19th century prophet was Dostoevsky, not Karl Marx."

"In the preface to an anthology of Russian literature, Vladimir Nabokov stated that he had not found a single page of Dostoevsky worthy of inclusion. This ought to mean that Dostoevsky should not be judged by each page but rather by the total of all the pages that comprise the book."

"The following is an extract from M. Dostoevsky's celebrated novel, The Brothers Karamazof, the last publication from the pen of the great Russian novelist, who died a few months ago, just as the concluding chapters appeared in print. Dostoevsky is beginning to be recognized as one of the ablest and profoundest among Russian writers. His characters are invariably typical portraits drawn from various classes of Russian society, strikingly life-like and realistic to the highest degree. The following extract is a cutting satire on modern theology generally and the Roman Catholic religion in particular. The idea is that Christ revisits earth, coming to Spain at the period of the Inquisition, and is at once arrested as a heretic by the Grand Inquisitor."

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else can tell, what it is like to be alive."

"You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important."

"Writing is also a profession, and, at its best, an honourable one. It has been made honourable by those who have already been members of it. Whether you like it or not, every time you set pen to paper you’re staring at the same blank space that confronted Milton, Melville, Emily Bronte, Dostoevsky and George Eliot, George Orwell and William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf and William Carlos Williams, not to mention the latest hero, Gabriel Garcia Marquez."

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

"Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles."

"Trust no one in whom the desire to punish is strong"