99 Quotes by Peter York

I often find myself worrying about celebrities. It's an entirely caring thing; it's not like the people who commission those photographs with cruel arrows to go on the covers of the celebrity magazines. The photographs show botched plastic surgery, raging eczema, weight gain and horrible clothes for maximum schadenfreude.

In the 1940s, cigarettes would be shown in classy situations, endorsed by celebrities - real A-list Hollywood stars in America - the ads would make claims about tobacco quality or manufacturing science and, bizarrely, some brands had what almost amounted to health claims.

Nobody knows anything. I deal with people in all walks of life, some of whom should have some idea of what they're doing. And they're all clueless. It's astonishing that any bridges stay up, or that planes don't constantly plummet from the sky. It's heartening, in a strange way.

Rock and roll is the hamburger that ate the world.

Like lots of baby boomers, I was brought up on archaic anthropomorphism. Upstanding Christian dogs. Rabbits with family values. Because the ancient texts and pictures were sacred - Potter, Milne and the rest. Even concerned parents who knew Freud and Jung never saw the contradictions in feeding us on them.

The old process of social assimilation used to be mainly about English new money - generated in London, the mucky, brassy North or the colonies - buying those houses and restoring them, and doing the three-generation thing, mouldering into the landscape, and the 'community,' identifying with the place in a familiar way.

Chandeliers are marvels of drop-dead showiness, the jewellery of architecture.

Have you got a Beemer, an Audi, a Saab or a Volvo that replaced a Ford, Vauxhall, Rover or Nissan? Many Brits have. Your first Beemer. A particularly nice smell of leather. Something rather plain but satisfactory about the interior. And that lovely enamel wotsit in the middle of the steering wheel. A moment of quiet 'because I'm worth it' pride.

There are pop managers, and then there's Simon Cowell, who isn't gay, Jewish or particularly riveting. He's not without interest but he doesn't exactly have the hinterland of, say, Brian Epstein.