"Looking around at the faces of his colleagues in the Senior Common Room he felt reassured: not a Lineament of Gratifi…"

"Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round."

"Four times, under our educational rules, the human pack is shuffled and cut – at eleven-plus, sixteen-plus, eighteen-…"

"I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It's a dying art."

"Language is the net that holds thought trapped within a particular culture. But if one could only strike the ball wit…"

"That's the attraction of the conference circuit: it's a way of converting work into play, combining professionalism w…"

""Ich respektiere einen Mann, der ein Angebot erkennt. Es ist eine aussterbende Kunst."- Kleine Welt: eine akademische…"

"Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time. The chasm b…"

"I never really had any aspirations to be an actor when I was young. I wanted to play the piano in a bar, to be the ol…"

"If I do decide one day to stop acting, I just hate the idea of people going: 'Oh, did you ever do anything else besid…"