An artist has to go to every extreme, to stretch his sensibility through excess and suffering in order to feel and to communicate more.

You may look back on your life and accept it as good or evil. But it is far, far harder to admit that you have been completely unimportant; that in the great sum of things, all a man's endless grapplings are no more significant than the scuttlings of a cockroach.

It’s really interesting because 50 years ago, if you didn’t wear a hat everyone looked at you. It just proves that everything is fashion.

I don’t think I’m known for my gifts – I’m known for my gall. I don’t want to be just a famous person – I’m too old.

I didn’t want to tell Mother I worked as a journalist. She thought I was a prostitute. Locking yourself in a room and inventing characters and conversations which do not exit is no way for a grown man to behave.

We build our character as a carapace to keep away the fear of the abyss. That’s what our character is for.

One of the many troubles of growing older is that it gets progressively harder to find a famous historical figure who hadn’t yet amounted to anything by the time he was your age.

The problem I’ve got is that I really, really like drugs. I love everything about them. It is horrific being sober all the time-utterly awful.

I don’t really know what Americans are like. I’ve no idea. I know a few things about them. In my imagination, they have warm peachy hearts, whereas the English have horrible spiteful withered hearts – success in England inspires envy – in America, it inspires hope.

But really death seems the least awful thing that can happen to someone.