"I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain."

“Writer: I don’t know whether you've ever looked into a miner's eyes – for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you've ever seen. I think perhaps that's why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.”

“Headmaster: They were all socialists. Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?”

“Geoff: We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.”

“Headmaster: Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.”

“To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.”

“Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.”