"My favourite musician happens to be the same as Shakespeare's: John Dowland. His songs are sorrowful but heal the soul by their sweetness and courage."

"He was the rarest musician that his age did behold; having travelled beyond the seas, and compounded English with foreign skill in that faculty."

"Semper Dowland semper dolens."

"Hark you shadows that in darkness dwell, Learn to contemn light, Happy, happy they that in hell Feel not the world's despite."

"True love cannot be changed, Though delight from desert Be estranged. Farewell, farewell But yet or ere I part (O cruel), Kiss me sweet, kiss me sweet my jewel."

"Come again: sweet love doth now invite, Thy graces that refrain, To do me due delight, To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die, With thee again in sweetest sympathy."

"I am one of a team of Iraqi weapons inspectors currently travelling through the United Kingdom under very difficult conditions searching for weapons of mass distraction."

"It first was a rumour dismissed as a lie but then came the evidence none could deny: a double page spread in the Sunday Express — The Russians are running the DHSS!"

"Hitching up the M11 coming back from a Dexys gig got picked up 'bout half eleven by this bloke in a funny wig"

"He wanted me to beat him up! It was an open invitation! Late at night he picked me up — an act of open provocation!"

"A five pence fine is right and proper — and to sum up my defence it was his fault he came a cropper: CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE!"

"I don't want a fortnight on the Costa del Sol Don't wanna go to Bognor — it's a plague-ridden hole and it don't fit in with my ideology... Down the Adriatic to the Vlora bay Twenty pints of Fosters and I'm away 'Cos now I know just where I wanna be: Albania — that's the place for me!"

"No agony, no ecstacy, no pleasure and no pain — so exquisitely uninteresting you drive your wife insane The TV is your oracle, the newspapers your guide and your shiny little vehicle is your passion and your pride You've done the same things every day for nigh on forty years and in your ludicrous routines you hide your worthless fears On the blandest boat in Boredom you are captain of the crew and every time I eat vegetables it makes me think of you."

"My wardrobe is like a garden oh, I don't know how I've got the gall! my wardrobe is just like a wardrobe — it's not like a garden at all!"

"So thin, and yet... so thick."

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Gotcha!"

"And the Lord Rupert looked at his work, and even he saw that it was a load of crap, but this was the enterprise culture and it sold millions so it was good. And on the same basis he decided to take over the television too, and the earth itself wept, and little robins vomited, and cuddly furry animals threw themselves under trains, and the whole thing was filmed by Sky Channel for a horror nature programme, and the most awful thing of all was that this was just the beginning."

"No matter what they say the time has come I'm ready now to start a new beginning With all our hopes and all our dreams And I know the stars will shine for you and for me From the moment you believe."

"For a soldier I listed, to grow great in fame. And be shot at for sixpence a day."

"Spanking Jack was so comely, so pleasant, so jolly, Though winds blew great guns, still he ’d whistle and sing; Jack loved his friend, and was true to his Molly, And if honour gives greatness, was great as a king."

"His form was of the manliest beauty, His heart was kind and soft; Faithful below he did his duty, But now he ’s gone aloft."

"Did you ever hear of Captain Wattle? He was all for love, and a little for the bottle."

"There ’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, To keep watch for the life of poor Jack."

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

"When Your Number's Up You Go"

"Food, Glorious Food"

"If you've lost your faith in love and music, oh, the end won't be long."

"We'll be Libertines until the day we die."

"I'm an ambitious person. I never consider myself in competition with anyone, and I'm not saying that from an arrogant standpoint, it's just that my journey started so, so long ago, and I'm still on it and I won't stand still."

"Work hard, sleep less"

"Stringer is very calculating and he has to be for so many reasons. He'll calculates the next steps, shipments, inventory, pays workers..all that. But the wicked part is that he can plan murders because that's a part of his business. I'll tell you, if I, Idris, had to contract for murders as part of my job, I couldn't do it because I have a heart. I have no stomach for ordering other people's deaths. Stringer just gets in there, orders the deed and bam..that's it..it's done and he doesn't think twice about it. There's no way I could be that cold. I'm also a more lively kid out there, doing stuff and I can't just do one thing forever. Stringer is committed to his job and business so much so he doesn't have much of a personal life so he's more one dimensional. As for me I have a child, a life, thirst for travel, you know I'm curious..whereas Stringer is more interested in being the best business person and his interests don't go further than that."

"There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while."

"I wanted to make my life short, and I was at a party in Toppers' Hose, and the coincidence was too much. It was like a message from God. OK, it was disappointing that all God had to say to me was, like, Jump off a roof, but I didn't blame him. What else was he supposed to tell me?"

"I couldn't get the mood back; it was as if one of the kids had woken up just as Cindy and I were starting to make love. I hadn't changed my mind, and I still knew that I'd have to do it sometime. It's just that I knew I wasn't going to be able to do it in the next five minutes."

"And another way of explaining it is that shit happens, and there's no space too small, too dark and airless and fucking hopeless, for people to crawl into."

"But I'd felt as if I'd pissed my life away in the same way that you can piss money away. I'd had a life, full of kids and wives and jobs and all the usual stuff, and I'd somehow managed to mislay it. No, you see, that's not right. I knew where my life was, just as you know where the money goes when you piss it away. I hadn't mislaid it at all. I'd spent it."

"I'm sorry, but there's no disturbed mental balance here, my friend. I'd say he got it just right. Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad thing... Surely that's fair enough? Surely the coroner's report should read, "He took his own life after sober and careful contemplation of the fucking shambles it had become.""

"What if a sense of humour is like hair — something a lot of man lose as they get older?"

"And after tea, we play Junior Scrabble. We are the ideal nuclear family. We eat together, we play improving board games instead of watching television, we smile alot. I fear that at any moment I may kill somebody."

"These feelings were exactly what he had been so afraid of, and this was why he had been so sure that falling in love was rubbish, and, surprise surprise, it was rubbish, and ... and it was too late."

"Each day was a bad day, but he survived by kidding himself that each day was somehow unconnected to the day before."

"Single mothers — bright, attractive, available women, thousands of them all over London — they were the best invention Will had ever heard of."

"Then I lost it. Kinda lost it all, you know. Faith, dignity, about fifteen pounds."

"I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and, frankly, I think my guts have shit for brains."

"Where's the superficial? I was, and therefore am, dim, gloomy, a drag, unfashionable, unfanciable, and awkward. This doesn't seem like superficial to me. These aren't flesh wounds. These are life-threatening thrusts into the internal organs."

"As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of the people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive."

"By the early seventies I had become an Englishman — that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do."