I felt New York was a big, more stylish, more metropolitan Golders Green. I was thrilled.

Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.

Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.

Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future.

Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.

What can art really do in the face of atrocity?

The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.

Nations don't start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.

But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.

When we blindly focus on what is to come we fail to see the 'now' and it is the 'now' which is our life. Each moment of each day is what we are living. Don’t miss the moments of each day.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

For Christmas I do gift bags for my friends and the cast, and I put 'treat yo self' key chains in there. And people send me pictures of 'treat yo self' all the time.

The madness of demons is rage - the madness of angels - hope.

Upon the lips of babes asleep I saw light embracing light and so allowed my syllables to rest there as a prayer they might sing in their dreams.

It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws.

The predation of wolves and women by those who misunderstand them is strikingly similar.

Gut it is will move us from the gutter .. . to the rebirth of real men.

Politics makes strange post-masters.

Every vote for a governing office is an instrument for enslaving me.