"In Edinburgh? I quite like the City Cafe. Because you never get served in there. And I like the idea that you can go in there for three hours and still not get your order. I think that’s quite funny. And then when you say ‘Can I have some food - I’m wasting away,’ they have the audacity to tut at you. When there’s only four of you in there. Fuckers. They should all be shot in the face. Sorry. I’m only joking. And I’m really tired."

"I had a garter snake named Clayton."

"[When asked if he used to go onstage dressed as Jesus with a watercolour beard]"

"I don’t think I’d have done comedy if I was born eighty years ago [...] I’d have been a lord. Shooting people that were on my land [...] With a wig, yeah. And some crisps."

"[When suggested he could have invented crisps] I couldn’t have invented crisps. [...] I don't really want to be known as the man who invented crisps. [...] I invented apples. [...] I invented pandas, and caps. I invented soil."

"I used to suck [Smarties] until they were all white, let them dry, and then put them back in the packet and show my mum the Smarties with no colour on them."

"[When asked if he could think of a cure for a dog who eats soil]"

"[When asked if he has a favorite woodland creature]"

"[When asked if he varies the animals in his comedy depending on where he performs]"

"I think I should be in a [Disney animated] film called ‘Space Shrews’. Where I go to space. With a load of shrews. And nothing really happens. We just get out and have a lolly and then come back. But it’ll be a musical [...] the ship will be built out of my own hair."

"[When asked if he would advocate stalking one's favourite comedian in the hope that one gets to form an award-winning double-act with them and become world famous]"

"[When asked if he sees the future with people wearing shirts with his face on it]"

"I'd like to punch out a really old lady. There'd be no repercussions."

"I've always had my suspicions about moss."

"Un des plus grands romanciers que l'Angleterre ait jamais eus. ("One of the greatest novelists that England has ever had.")"

"The most original novelist now writing in English."

"Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down."

"In the age of the concentration camp, when from 1935 to 1947 or so, she wrote her very best novels, no writer did more to illumine the springs of human cruelty, suffering and bravery."

"Well, of course, people are only human," said Dudley to his brother, as they walked to the house behind the women. "But it really does not seem much for them to be."

"As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots."

"A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit."

"Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth," said his cousin. "But we seem to have no other."

"The bud is on the bough again, The leaf is on the tree."

"I have heard the mavis singing Its love-song to the morn; I've seen the dew-drop clinging To the rose just newly born."

"Time has too much credit," said Bridget. "I never agree with the compliments paid to it. It is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary."

"We have lived and loved together Through many changing years; We have shared each other's gladness, And wept each other's tears."

"The morn was fair, the skies were clear, No breath came o'er the sea."

"Meek and lowly, pure and holy, Chief among the "blessed three.""

"Come o'er the moonlit sea, The waves are brightly glowing."

"Come, wander with me, for the moonbeams are bright On river and forest, o'er mountain and lea."

"A word in season spoken May calm the troubled breast."

"Pushing forty? She's clinging on to it for dear life!"

"Manson arrived at the déjeuner given by the minister of Beaux Arts fantastically drunk—punctuated the ceremony with cat-calls and cock-a-doodle-doos, and finally staggered to his feet, hurled obscene insults at the company in general and the minister in particular, and precipitated himself on the ambassadress, Lady Phipps, some say with amorous intent others with lethal intent... the guests fled ices uneaten, coffee undrunk... I hope an example will be made, and that they will seize the opportunity for turning the sot out of the Tate, not because he is a sot, but because he has done nothing but harm to modern painting."

"Tell the Trustees I think it is a very good Sickert — but the question is whether he is important enough for the Tate. I think not; but as an old friend of the artist perhaps I am a prejudiced judge."

"Over my dead body."

"In a country where feeling for art is not one of the national characteristics, it is particularly difficult to arrive at a common understanding of the term "art". There are many obstacles in the way, and some of them are imposed by the mere existence of such a body as the Royal Academy, for lacking any intuition in this matter of art, the majority of people turn to that institution for guidance, and naturally assume that any work receiving its blessing must be a work of art in the strict meaning of the word, and consequently the artistic quality of a painting is, in the popular estimation, measured in ratio to its degree of photographic realism."

"My doctor has warned me that my nerves will not stand any further strain... I have begun to have blackouts, in which my actions become automatic. Sometimes these periods last several hours.... I had one of these blackouts at an official luncheon in Paris recently, and startled guests by suddenly crowing like a cock...."

"The roses are dying, and so am I."

"A flushed face, white hair and a twinkle in his eye; and this twinkling got him out of scrapes that would have sunk a worthier man without trace."

"Hopelessly insular."

"If a lion could speak, it would not understand itself."

"I should say that happiness is being where one is and not wanting to be anywhere else."

"It's not the despair, Laura, I can stand the despair. It's the hope."

"To be absolutely honest, what I feel really bad about is that I don't feel worse. There's the ineffectual liberal's problem in a nutshell."

"The more you try to describe a dream the further it eludes your grasp, retreating before the advance of the words, growing cooler and cooler and paler and paler, until, when you have recorded it all, there is nothing of what it was really like left in your memory."

"One can imagine having a procedural rule that anything ambiguous should be treated as the Taj Mahal unless we see that it is labelled "fog"…The motorist replies: "What sort of rule is this? Surely the best guarantee I can have that the fog is fog is if I fail to see the sign saying 'fog' because of the fog.""

"For we Englysshe men ben borne under the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is never stedfaste but ever waverynge, wexynge one season and waneth and dyscreaseth another season. And that comyn Englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a-nother, in so moche that in my dayes happened that certayn marchauntes were in a ship in Tamyse for to have sayled over the see into Zelande, and, for lacke of wynde, thei taryed atte Forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them. And one of theym named Sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for mete and specyally he axyd after eggys, and the goode wyf answerde that she could speke no Frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no Frenshe, but wolde have hadde egges; and she understode hym not. And thenne at laste a-nother sayd that he wolde have eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she understod hym wel. Loo, what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges, or eyren? Certaynly it is hard to playse every man, by-cause of dyversite and chaunge of langage."

"Al these thynges consydered, there can no man resonably gaynsaye but there was a kyng of thys lande named Arthur. For in al places, Crysten and hethen, he is reputed and taken for one of the nine worthy, and the fyrst of the thre Crysten men."

"The worshipful fader and first foundeur and enbelissher of ornate eloquence in our Englissh. I mene Maister Geffrey Chaucer."