"His intellect may have lacked originality, but he was a pioneer in the study of Sanscrit poetry and in the application of criticism to Jewish history."

"And the cold marble leapt to life a god."

"Brilliant and numerous as are the works of the late Dean Milman, it was those only who had the great privilege of his friendship who could fully realise the amazing extent and variety of his knowledge; the calm, luminous, and delicate judgment which he carried into so many spheres; the inimitable grace and tact of his conversation, coruscating with the happiest anecdotes, and the brightest and yet the gentlest humour; and what was perhaps more remarkable than any single faculty, the admirable harmony and symmetry of his mind and character, so free from all the disproportion, and eccentricity, and exaggeration, that sometimes make even genius assume the form of a splendid disease. They can never forget those yet higher attributes, which rendered him so unspeakably reverent to all who knew him well—his fervent love of truth, his wide tolerance, his large, generous, and masculine judgments of men and things; his almost instinctive perception of the good that is latent in each opposing party, his disdain for the noisy triumphs and the fleeting popularity of mere sectarian strife, the fond and touching affection with which he dwelt upon the images of the past, combining, even in extreme old age, with the keenest and most hopeful insight into the progressive movements of his time, and with a rare power of winning the confidence and reading the thoughts of the youngest about him."

"Ride on, ride on, in majesty! In lowly pomp ride on to die."

"Thou our throbbing flesh hast worn; Thou our mortal griefs hast borne; Thou hast shed the human tear; Jesus, Son of Mary, hear!"

"That such a writer should have devoted himself to the department of history, which more than any other has been distorted by ignorance, puerility, and dishonesty, I conceive to be one of the happiest facts in English literature, and (though sometimes diverging from his views) in many parts of the following work I have largely availed myself of his researches."

"Death cannot come To him untimely who is fit to die; The less of this cold world, the more of heaven; The briefer life, the earlier immortality."

"Began Milman's Latin Christianity. Bating the faults of style, it is most valuable."

"Milman – read a good deal – more impressed than ever by the contrast between the substance and the style. The substance excellent – the style very much otherwise."

"He is a fine young man: and his powers are very great. They are, however, better fitted for the drama than for narration; the drama admits his favourite strain of composition, and is easier in its structure."

"Our successors (for you and I are now old enough in authorship to use this term) are falling into the same faults as the Roman poets after the Augustan age, and the Italians after the golden season of their poetry. They are overlabouring their productions, and overloading them with ornament, so that all parts are equally prominent, everywhere glare and glitter, and no keeping and no repose. Henry Milman has spoilt his Samor in this way. It is full of power and of beauty, but too full of them."

"A comedy is just a tragedy interrupted, I once said. Do you finish with the kiss or when she opens her eyes to tell him she loves him and sees blonde hairs on his collar?"

"The darker the subject, the more light you must try to shed on the matter. And vice versa."

"There are very few people on top of life, and the rest of us don't like them very much."

"They've started this filthy floodlit cricket with cricketers wearing tin hats and advertisements for contraceptives on their boots."

"Plays by Alan Ayckbourn have been attracting larger audiences in the regional theatres than those of Shakespeare."

"Few women care to be laughed at and men not at all, except for large sums of money."

"I changed the locks long ago. He’s been litigating against me for more than two years, and I’m broke. I can’t afford a restraining order."

"Things are only boring if you are boring."

"Campaigning at a school in Enfield in 2001, Tony Blair was caught unawares by a feisty British Asian sixth-former. Suddenly this apparition arose before him, demolishing Blair's points as speedily as he tried to make them. This time around the New Labour machine haven't wanted to risk any of that. The Emperor has been ferried from Potemkin village to Potemkin hospital, and before he arrives a rigged rent-a-crowd of "ordinary people" are brought in to wave little flags. Journalists have been "embedded" - undoubtedly the cadres were hoping that these trusties would begin to sympathise with the man upon whom their jobs depended [and] they'd cease to notice how much of what he said was utter shit."

"Wealth is a form of power in our society. With great power comes great responsibility. If you have too much wealth, ipso facto, you have too much power - therefore you have too much responsibility - and you're a kind of dictator."

"My ex wants to divide up the contents of the former marital home by coming round, when I’m not there, putting a red dot on absolutely anything he wants, then getting me to organise it all into a place where he can have it picked up. Anyone else had this?"

"There can be no more thrilling idea of intimacy than connecting with someone through the agency of the written word. Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality. The reader I seek is a tautology, for he/she is simply…the person who wants to read what I have written."

"I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer."

"Anyway. #MeToo."

"I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form."

"Everything was twice repeated, Sometimes more than twice repeated, As they worked through the agenda (It seemed elastic, that agenda, Becoming longer, never shorter), Their utterances grew long, not shorter, It was just like spreading butter."

"The back streets of Fulham, Yorkshiremen in pub gardens, a laboratory rabbit, office friendships, a cutting, a quotation – anything can start him off, and when he brings us back from the outing we are usually either shaken or stirred, and sometimes both, reflecting that there is really nothing, however surreal, extravagant, improper or mundane, that Ewart could not write a poem about."

"My life may be much happier to-morrow Hunger and love that press against the body, The two eternal needs we recognise, Desires that so relentlessly pursue one, May get me down or raise me to the skies And make me a Don Bradman or Don Juan."

"So I was smacked up on the Prime Minister's jet – big deal."

"The éminence cerise, the bolster behind the throne."

"I have C-PTSD. I wonder why? His "compassionate writings" on mental illness make me want to throw up."

"Miss Twye was soaping her breasts in the bath When she heard behind her a meaning laugh And to her amazement she discovered A wicked man in the bathroom cupboard."

"My grandmother used to say before you moan about the muck on someone else's glasses make sure you're not on about the muck on your own her glasses were filthy"