I have Van Gogh's ear for music

Those who rule the world get so little opportunity to run about and laugh and play in it.

My first meeting with you only confirmed what I first suspected. You are a fraud, a charlatan and a shyster. My favourite kind of person, in fact.

Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.

To me, reason is as spiritual as anything else, the beauty of reason seems to me indelible and ineffable and numinous... the spirit is after all the same word we use to describe... essence

Life, that can shower you with so much splendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.

You'll often hear the phrase "science doesn't know everything." Well, of course it doesn't know everything. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean that it knows nothing.

Enthusiats are used to being mocked, maligned and misunderstood. We don't really mind.

Sex without smiling is as sickly and as base as vodka and tonic without ice.

Compromise is a stalling between two fools.

Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me.

Better sexy and racy Than sexist and racist

Wine can be a better teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books

I'm fat because I'm greedy, and if my mind is fat it's because I'm curious.

Old professors never die, they just lose their faculties.

A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation.

It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with.

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.

It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue.

I like to wake up each morning and not know what I think, that I may reinvent myself in some way.

Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars.

How can one not be fond of something that the Daily Mail despises?

People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t

Sometimes there just isn't enough vomit in the world.

Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?

The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just a fucking lunatic.

Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.

You are who you are when nobody's watching.

An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.

The short answer to that is 'no.' The long answer is 'fuck no.

The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.

My first words, as I was being born [...] I looked up at my mother and said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.

I am a lover of truth, a worshiper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.

No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.

Hell, I am young. I am free. My teeth are clean. The sun shines. To hell with everything else