Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the centre of man's universe is the earth?

The truth is that our race survived ignorance; it is our scientific genius that will do us in.

We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.

Back when I went to Louisiana State University a million years ago, we got the Baton Rouge paper. But if you wanted to read 'The New York Times' or 'The Wall Street Journal,' you had to go to the reading room of the student union, and you got the edition several days after it had been published, and you had to read it on a wooden stick.

The giant fraud that is Britain's education system strides ever onwards, messing up many more lives than it improves.

Learning a play is one thing, but to learn to play Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' without music: that's brilliant.

I studied secondary education.