Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means... the need to be left. I am driven to grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.

It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start their life as children.

I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pate than any other.

It scored right away with me by being the smooth, fine-grained sort, not the coarse, flaky, dry-on-the-outside rubbish full of chunks of gut and gristle to testify to its authenticity.

If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.

I want a dish to taste good, rather than to have been seethed in pig's milk and served wrapped in a rhubarb leaf with grated thistle root.

He resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again.

His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.