Writer: What, above all, Im primarily concerned with is the substance — Alan Bennett

"Polly: Education with socialists, its like sex, all right as long as you dont have to pay for it."

"Mrs Wicksteed: Of course, Ive known for years our marriage has been a mockery. My body lying there night after night in the wasted moonlight. I know now how the Taj Mahal must feel."

"Brian (asked how he feels about being a politician): Passes the time. Fills in that awkward gap between the cradle and the grave."

"Thats a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water."

"Counsel: [You are charged with] loitering to commit a felony. Now then Mr Golightly..."

"Geoff: We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldnt obey the rules."

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."

"we are engaged in a grim experiment never before attempted. We are subjecting whole populations to exposure to chemicals which animal experiments have proved to be extremely poisonous and in many cases cumulative in their effect. These exposures now begin at or before birth and-unless we change our methods-will continue through the lifetime of those now living. No one knows what the result will be, because we have no previous experience to guide us."

"pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness"

"I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought."

"“We need brains, is the bottom line,” Ivy said. “We’re not hunter-gatherers anymore. We’re all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn’t bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It’s our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds.”"

"I have been clinically depressed for most of my life. I once used drugs to fix it. Then I stopped. I stopped because I decided they were making me stupid, and Id rather be miserable than stupid. I am what I am."