"The sun, heavy-eyed from lack of sleep, owing to the system of a staggered summer time, stumbled into the heavens, and with a heavy sigh set about its duties."

"Since it is probable that any book flying a bullet in its title is going to produce a corpse sooner or later - here it is."

"The Acol bidding system"

"It must be someone collecting for charity. Respectable women never call the family for any other reason."

"He smiled his irresistible smile, but Dora found it highly resistible."

"Lucky Australians! They can go on sleeping for another seven hours and stil pass as early risers."

"Singer worth their while must watch it; Always count your dotted crotchet."

"He did not suffer fools gladly (or at all) and his threshold for foolishness was set rather low. He was the master of the terrifying put-down: with his fine palate he loathed cigarette smoke and once on the train, an acquaintance told me with awe, a woman lit up in the non-smoking carriage near him. When he remonstrated she said: "Oh, it's only ten feet from the smoking section." Freud sprang to his feet and said: "Madam, we're only five feet from the lavatory, is it all right if I piss on the floor?""

"In 1978 I was on a parliamentary delegation to Japan and returned via China during the Cultural Revolution, a choice also made by young Winston Churchill, then the Conservative MP for Stretford. I was debriefed by the Minister for Information who asked if there was anything at all I would like to ask. I said: "Yes. Everything you do, you do with extreme care and precision. When I ask questions that your government does not like, my driver calls for me five minutes later than arranged. When I ask if there are any blind or handicapped children in China, I get cabbage soup for dinner."Now I am in your country with a colleague, than whom I am older, have been in parliament longer, have held higher positions in our respective political parties: we are both staying at the Peking Palace Hotel and his suite is bigger than mine. Why?"The Minister, very embarrassed, finally said: "It is because Mr Churchill had a famous grandfather."It is the only time that I have been out-grandfathered."

"I suppose that if your name is Freud, it is better to be related to Sigmund than not. It must be frustrating to have to keep denying family connection."

"If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer."

"The important question is, do we want more women in management positions, or less assholes in general. I lean toward the latter."

"Ankier is anxious to avoid what she calls the “Anna Kournikova syndrome” — “I realise that a lot of the media attention I’ve got is because I don’t look horrible, but that can bring attention you don’t want.”"

"I still haven’t learned to deal with situations like that very well — but I don’t think you should, because then you’re accepting defeat. It’s good to be stubborn, to be hard on yourself."

"This year I’m planning on hibernating from October until the Olympics next August. It’s that important to me. It drives me. And it’s very addictive. One of the cruellest things about the sport is that you’re never fulfilled or completely happy with your performance. You’re running against a clock so you always want to go faster and think that you can. That becomes an addiction."

"From afar, I have long admired Stella McCartney … who has never used animal products in her eponymous brand and who has catalyzed the development of new luxury products that gorgeously resemble leather, fur or skin, but aren’t. Stella has also taken tremendous risks for her principles, including making clear to Gucci from the beginning she would not work with leather, a bold statement to an iconic fashion house arguably synonymous with leather, particularly from a then 29-year-old designer. … Stella is now known as a fashion designer, and one particularly adept at designing for women in all of our various moods, ambitions, roles and for every season. … Her aesthetics are as consistent as her ethics – across space and time, a Stella McCartney is as recognizable as a Stella McCartney."

"Stella’s work has helped to redefine and recalibrate our thinking … Higher-end brands have said they couldn’t exist without fur. Stella proves, of course you can."

"[Meat industry] truly is a disgusting industry, all the more so because it’s hidden. Have you ever seen animals being shipped to abattoirs? Do you even know where these abattoirs are? Have you ever seen an animal getting killed for the food you eat? It’s a dark, dark, dark trade that nobody really knows about, and a hugely profitable one at that. … If I don’t believe in killing animals, why on earth would I do it for the sake of fashion … I don’t think there’s any difference, because at the end of the day you’re killing an animal and stripping its skin off its body. It’s somebody’s baby – or it has a baby – it breathes, it lives, it has emotions, it has feelings … I find it fascinating that leather and fur are so often associated with the top luxury level of fashion. And yet leather, in this day and age, is probably cheaper than a piece of cotton. So there’s such a tiny price put on an animal’s life."

"My mum was Jewish. Maybe I'm a really bad Jew because I'm always so excited to say that I am, but I don't live and breathe the religion."

"When Your Number's Up You Go"

"You've Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two"

"Food, Glorious Food"

"Money can't buy poverty."

"I won't eat anything that has intelligent life, but I'd gladly eat a network executive or a politician."

"When I quoted Bulwer Lytton's "The pen is mightier than the sword" to Marty Feldman he added reflectively, "Yes, and considerably easier to write with.""

"I carry Keaton's photo around with me to remind me what happened to him. If the Hollywood system can destroy him it can destroy me."

"I feel about Keaton the way an organist thinks of Bach."

"Hookers have to deliver on their promise... unlike politicians."

"I was about five and a half or six when I converted [to vegetarianism] … I was brought up the first five years of my life in London, in the working-class part of the city, where the only animals that a child is liable to see are domestic animals, or cats, or pigeons, or horses, none of which one eats. Then I was evacuated onto a farm when the war came, and billeted with this family of farmers, and I got very friendly with a rabbit—George, the rabbit. Then one day, George the rabbit was George the lunch. For a farming family there was nothing obscene about that. They kill animals; they serve them up at table and say, "Hey, yes, that's the animal you were playing with yesterday!"—which is not abnormal. It was obscene to me as a child."

"Sex is two plus two making five, rather than four. Sex is the X ingredient that you can't define, and it's that X ingredient between two people that make both a man and a woman good in bed. It's all relative. There are no rules."

"Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act."

"As a journalist, my job is to be dispassionate. Suddenly to be the centre of a story and to be crying, it made me feel very insecure."

"The Nazi murder squads just wouldn't waste a bullet on a child. I just couldn't process that. I couldn't handle it."

"C4's prime marketing concept is the appeal to a 16-34 audience. This has some strange consequences—a series explaining Islam, for example, is entrusted to Peaches Geldof. There's an obsession with adolescent transgression and sex. Gordon Ramsay is hired to make a series called The F Word; Designer Vaginas is followed by The World's Biggest Penis. Earlier this autumn, unless I dreamed it, we were subject to a "wank week.""

"For some of us it now embodies a mildly prurient voyeurism, but those who stay tuned claim it offers real insights into people's lives."

"My guess is that mainstream channels will play a leading role for another decade, and probably far longer. Some content may be fragmented into itsy-bitsy bites delivered via mobiles, but programmes as we know them will remain central."

"Are all men in disguise except those crying?"

"And silence matched the silence under snow."

"You sod, Leave my soul alone, leave my soul alone"

"I know the colour rose, and it is lovely, But not when it ripens in a tumour."

"Praying is another way of singing. You plant in the tree the soul of lemons. You plant in the gardens the spirit of roses."

"Realise that man is comparable to the brute creation except when uplifted by the loving Covenant initiated with our Patriarchs."

"In all "benedictions", be they expressing plea or thanksgiving, we affirm that God is the "source" of every bounty we enjoy and of every favour we seek."

"Like sacrifices, prayer is intended to change man, not God. Its purpose is to cultivate a contrite heart, to promote feelings of humility and inadequacy in man, whilst encouraging reliance on Divine assistance."

"Even if one is familiar with the precise meaning of everything one recites, the act of worship can hardly have any significance at all unless it registers the overall message each part of our prayers is meant to convey."