I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The hu...
I am a lover of truth, a worshiper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.
I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.
I'm fat because I'm greedy, and if my mind is fat it's because I'm curious.
I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today -- whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awo...
I've always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden's animati...
I think the fact that I'm so well known to be gay makes it very difficult to have a convincing relationship with a woman on screen. It wouldn't be at all difficult for me to kiss a woman - I'll kiss a...
When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this w...
A true thing, poorly expressed, is a lie.
An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.
As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments...
Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?
Happiness is no respecter of persons.
I don't watch television, I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.
How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god wh...
You are who you are when nobody's watching.
It's rather splendid to think of all those great men and women who appear to have presented symptoms that allow us to describe them as bipolar. Whether it's Hemingway, Van Gogh... Robert Schumann has...
I've never had any illusions about being a lead actor in films, because lead actors have to be of a certain kind. Apart from the beauty of looks and figure, which I cannot claim to have, there's just...
Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good.
Once, in his first term, Cartwright had been bold enough to ask him why he was clever, what exercises he did to keep his brain fit. Healey had laughed.It's memory, Cartwright, old dear. Memory, the mo...