Unbeknown to me, my manager, under my very nose (in a crouching position) has all these years been secretly compiling a book from my correspondence. I often wondered what she was doing in my office. She never did a stroke of work for me. All the time, I have been working for her.
— Spike Milligan
We come across thirty or so hurried graves with makeshift wooden markers. 'Private Edwards, E.', a number, and that was all. Fourteen days ago he was alive, thinking feeling, hoping... If war was a game of cards, I'd say someone was cheating.
One important thing I recall about India was that it was quiet. It was never noisy in the way that life was noisy in London.
I have resigned from the human race. Look at the way we treat animals.
My father being a soldier, every time I saw soldiers marching - 'Well,' I thought, 'my father's that,' and these soldiers were always looking magnificent. And I thought they were powerful; they were all-powerful. I knew that they were an elite in India.
I remember lying out in my bed and looking at the vast, quiet sky. Right up above my head, there were three stars in a row, and I remember thinking, 'Well, I'll have those three stars all my life, and wherever I am, they will be. They are my stars, and they belong to me.'
As I kept having episodes of depression, I realized that it was not a one-off: that I had, well, not a disease, really - more an illness.
The night before Tilbury, the Cordon Bleu gourmet dinner turned out Cordon Brown. Six out of ten to the chef for trying and ten out of ten to us for eating it.
The experience of being in the Army changed my whole life; I never believed that an organization such as ours could ever go to war, leave alone win it. It was, as Yeats remarked of the Easter Rising, 'A terrible beauty.'
Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
I'm a hero with coward's legs.
My Father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.
I spent many years laughing at Harry Secombe's singing until somebody told me that it wasn't a joke.
I can speak Esperanto like a native.
A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree.
The lunacy continues and has every chance of becoming a way of life unless we stop it soon. Men are getting so used to wars that the psychiatric wing of the RAMC are planning how to break the news to the men when the war is over.
May 8th 1943. Deluge. The rain not only fell mainly on the plain in Spain; it also fell mainly on the back of the bloody neck, dripping down the spine into the socks where it came out of the lace-holes in the boots.
Things began to improve when I went to Rangoon. To begin with, my father was promoted, which meant he was at home more. The matriarchal society was ended, and for the first time, I went to a boys' school.
You couldn't enclose people in institutions or hospitals or almshouses in the way the Victorians managed to do. India was too big. Seeing the suffering people was terrible, but I think I was more distraught at the needless cruelty to so many animals.
My father was a soldier, which meant that he was a warrior, which meant that he was important. My mother rode a horse and sang in the Governor-General's band, so that made her important as well.
I am afraid that, like Timon of Athens, I just cannot let go of my friendships.
When I get depressed, I try to get something for the terrible sadness that comes over me and create something in terms of poetry.
Thankfully, we didn't stop at Malta. I think Malta was thankful, too.
Money couldn't buy friends, but you got a better class of enemy.
I'm not afraid of dying I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Is there anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order.
I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.
I shook hands with a friendly Arab. I still have my right arm to prove it.
And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected.
Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.
We reach a secondary road and - here comes the bonus - we pass the Temple of Neptune and Cerene, at Paestum, both looking beautiful in the sunlight. Strung from the Doric columns are lines of soldiers' washing. At last they had been put to practical use. If only the ancient Greeks had known.
I had stopped going to church the moment I joined the Regiment. No more could my mother nag me into God's presence.
I can't stand being late. I try to be professional. I try not to let people down. But people let me down. That's why I don't rely on anyone to call me. That's why I have clocks as well as people. I have to be able to call myself; it's the only way to be sure.
It was implanted in me that I came from a different class - an elevated class. I was cushioned by servants. I don't remember doing anything for myself. I only played and went to school.
My parents always threw everything out, gave everything away. I'm surprised they never threw me away. That's why I've always kept my children's things. My parents had no feelings for belongings.
I don't think of depression as contagious. Other depressed people challenge the idea - which can be very persistent and irritating - that there is something odd about you: that you are unique with regard to this wretched state.
Driver Shepherd and I had been detailed to drive Lt. Budden in the Wireless Truck. We had been standing by vehicles for an hour, and nothing had happened, but it happened frequently.
Is the modern social pattern of unending change and movement the cause of two modern diseases, insecurity and dissatisfaction? How lucky Thomas Hood was to be able to write, 'I remember, I remember the house where I was born.' I don't even know what mine looked like!
For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron hand. Then with a wooden foot, and finally with a piece of string.
It's all in the mind, you know.
Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?
It was a perfect marriage. She didn't want to and he couldn't.
I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge.
All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
How long was I in the army? Five foot eleven.
