What a pity people don't take as much trouble with their own breeding as intelligent racehorse owners do. But then I suppose it is bordering on fascism to think like that.

One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.

Oh, to me not drinking is like being dead, almost. I sit here taking endless journeys down memory lane. It gets boring.

I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.

Journalism is the only thinkable alternative to working.

The more necessary it becomes to stop drinking, the more impossible it becomes to stop.

My misdeeds are accidental happenings and merely the result of having been in the wrong bar or bed at the wrong time, say most days between midday and midnight.

It's not name dropping, but not many people can say, like me, that they spent the day with the likes of Francis Bacon or that boring drunk Dylan Thomas. You don't forget things like that.

I was under the care of a couple of medical students who couldn't diagnose a decapitation.

In most betting shops you will see three windows marked 'Bet Here', but only one window with the legend 'Pay Out'.

There's nothing undignified about lying about all day and being waited on by servants, sipping bloody champagne.

You can start looking for your purpose in life after you have identify who you are

You become rich by helping the poor

The price tag that you put on your soul will determine the people and circumstances in which you find yourself.

On with the dance! Let joy be unconfin'd No sleep till morn when Youth and Pleasure meet.

One great thing about being a black man is that if you put on a hat, you can move around unnoticed.

Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.

The sun alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty (of moving the planets) and worthy to become the home of God himself.

Happiness is an exotic of celestial birth.

When the brothel burns down, even the pretty girls have to run out.