At the end of the day I have always seen the end of my relationships as a personal failure. There is nothing ever pretty in saying goodbye.

The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape.

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.

It was an interesting question as to whether the BBC had a future in the digital world, and what form of market failure could justify the licence fee system.

The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem, with interrelated sections.