I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor [group think] of the age and not go flopping along. By doing this he helps us to question and reassess our past, present and future situations, our assumptions and our options.

Soon someone would say the fatal words, "Well, I think it’s time for me to go to bed.

But in the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.

"What war?" said the Prime Minister sharply. "No one has said anything to me about a war. I really think I should have been told. I'll be damned," he said defiantly, "if they shall have a war without consulting me. What's a cabinet for, if there's not more mutual confidence than that? What do they want a war for anyway?"

I think there's almost nothing I can't excuse except perhaps worshiping graven images. That seems to be idiotic.