Craig Brown

Words have a life of their own. There is no telling what they will do. Within a matter of days, they can even turn turtle and mean the opposite. ”

My life is a monument to procrastination, to the art of putting things off until later, or much later, or possibly never. ”

Some people see life as a game of chess, while others prefer to see it as a game of cricket; but the longer I live, the more I think of it as a game of Consequences. ”

In real life, nothing would be more tedious than trailing around after two strangers as they went house-hunting in Hertfordshire. But for some reason, television is more compelling than real life. ”

One of the tricks of life is to have sense and money in roughly equal proportions. ”

Whenever television cameras are interviewing people in their homes, I tend to look over their shoulders and have a good snoop at their living rooms. I am always astonished at how clean they all look, with nothing out of place or unnecessary or dropped down any old how. ”

Poets, for example, are generally considered starry-eyed and sensitive, but only by those who have never encountered one. ”

Comedy is the slave of time. What seemed funny then is unlikely to seem funny now, just as what strikes us as funny now would not have seemed funny then. ”

Like the firm handshake and looking people straight in the eye, the blazer had originally been a symbol of trust. Because of this, it had been purloined by the less-than-trustworthy and became their preferred disguise. ”

Looking back, some of the happiest moments of my childhood were spent with my arm in packets of breakfast cereal, rootling around for a free gift. ”