Ten years before its time, a fashion is indecent; ten years after, it is hideous; but a century after, it is romantic.

Clothes are never a frivolity: they always mean something.

Clothes are inevitable. They are nothing less than the furniture of the mind made visible.

Clothes are never a frivolity: they always mean something, and that something is to a large extent outside the control of our conscious minds.

When women take off their corsets and heighten their skirts it always means high inflation and low morals.

The erogenous zone is always shifting, and it is the business of fashion to pursue it, without ever catching it up.

Nothing is more revealing of an age than its hypocrisies.

Avisitor from Mars contemplating a man in a frock coat and top hat and a woman in a crinoline might well have supposed that they belonged to different species.

Worlds of my own creation are erected with walls that are within but a few scant paces of each other. The world that God creates for me has no idea what walls are.

Jesus loved crème brûlée, but even with crème brûlée enough isn't just enough, it can get to be too much.

Why does anyone do the things they do?

No man bosses me around, and no man ever will.

I love Liverpool. The people are wonderful and I feel very much at home there.

Wisdom doesn't go out of style, even if it's in increasingly short supply.

Sir, I didn't deserve the grade you gave me on this test. Do you know a lower one?

If you look at successful pivots, they almost always are a pivot into something that the founder wanted. Not a random made up idea.

I'm jealous of everyone discovering Lovesey and Diamond for the first time-you have a wonderful backlist to catch up on. Me, all I can do is wait for the next book.

Thousands of years ago only Christ could walk on the water. Today anybody can do it; you just step on the garbage.