Useful Gobbets

‘We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial- I believe we are lost.’  

'My friend Sue, you’d love her, just a ball of eccentric energy. She said this sentence the other day that only she could say. She said: “I’ve got a new boyfriend!”
“Great what’s he like?” 
And this is what she said: “Sexually, he’s a bit of a Harry Potter fan.” 
Now that’s — you’re like “What the hell does that mean?” And apparently what this bloke does - this nearly killed me when I heard it - apparently what he does at the point of orgasm is, this bloke goes, “Expelliarmus!”  Isn’t it one of the creepiest things you’ve ever heard?
But this is the best part, I went “Oh God, what did you do?” 
“I just went with it Russ, I went: five points to Gryffindor!” You hang with people like that and the world is a happier place.'

"For some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears', for instance, is 'Never break into someone else's house.' The moral of 'Snow White' is 'Never eat apples.' The moral of World War I is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.'"

'If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.'

‘It is the primary arrogance of writers to assume that what they feel or felt must be what everyone feels or felt.’

'He’s not a particularly talkative person by nature. Quiet and shy are words frequently used to describe him, and there is some truth to that, but the deeper truth is that he finds most people to be incredibly dull. An even deeper truth than this is that he secretly fears he’s incredibly dull, that he has nothing novel or interesting to say for himself. He often finds himself wondering, when forced to speak to someone for longer than ten minutes at a time, if that person is quietly contemplating suicide in order to escape the conversation.'

'My daughter goes, “Daddy, what’s the best thing in the world?” I didn’t even have to think, I said “Darling, you’re the best thing in the world,” didn’t think about it, “you’re definitely the best thing.” She sat there for a while, and then she said “For me it’s sausages.”'

'It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.'

‘Do you think I have worked hard all those years to say the same thing and not to be changed? ... The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.’

“I would sort of like to say in defense of Ann Widdecombe that the thing that’s bad about her is all of her horrible views, not the fact that she’s ugly. Is, is that the best that we can say about this woman who voted against gay rights and horribly wanted to get into power and make us do horrible things? This evil person and the only thing we can find to say about her is she doesn’t look great? It’s a bit like insulting Hitler because you don’t like his moustache length.” 

‘If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine it.’

‘Come to think of it I don’t know that love has a point, which is what makes it so glorious. Sex has a point, in terms of relief and, sometimes procreation, but love, like all art, as Oscar said, is quite useless. 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.’

Dinosaur

"I will burn the heart out of you."

To A Stranger

'There are plenty of activities or qualities we could list that are most certainly unnatural if you are so mad as to think that humans are not part of nature, or so dull-witted as to believe that ‘natural’ means ‘all natures but human nature’: mercy, for example, is unnatural, virtue is unnatural, indeed- and this surely is the point- the idea of virtue is unnatural, within such foolish, useless meaning of the word ‘natural’.'

‘I will apologise for faithlessness, neglect, deceit, cruelty, unkindness, vanity and meanness, but I will not apologise for the urgings of my genitals nor, most certainly, will I ever apologise for the urgings of my heart. I may regret those urgings, rue them deeply and occasionally damn, blast and wish them to hell, but apologise- no: not where they do no harm.’