Quotes from Philip Hensher

I think you can tell when you meet someone whether they read novels. There's some hollowness if they don't.

Depressing realization sets in. Writing was invented not by human beings but by accountants. Most of the early writing systems are records of how much crap people own, how much money they have, how much money they owe, and other lowering/boastful facts of human life.

something very unusual, a chocolate-flavoured log of goats' cheese. "Made by lesbians in Wales," Sam had explained superfluously.

Emily and Fanny are doing their best to remain poker-stiff, firmly staring in their upright palanquins. But two hours on an elephant is as much as either of them can stand, and—after four times as long as that—they pine, they simply ache for the opportunity to complain, even more than the chance to rest.

If you don't say anything it can't become important, but if you say it everyone's ever after got to walk round it like a pile of rocks in the living room.

There's someone for everyone, here in London, they always say.

Memory, that exhausted repertory actor, going through the exhausted, familiar lines of some tired melodrama. It moved through the now meaningless scenes with a terrible practised proficiency for her benefit alone; and she was in the wings, condemned to watch it over and over

Previously, gay life had seemed a merry series of cabinet reshuffles and rearrangements, in which everyone was single for a time, then paired off for a time. If you stood still with a welcoming smile on your face, sooner or later somebody would come over and sit on it.

The Nude Male was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and was largely full of pictures of Greek vases, which hadn't been considered rude since Queen Victoria died.

If you wanted lesbians to come to a discussion, too, it might be better not to call your group the Gay Men's Group.

It happened to some people, that obsession with throwing their clothes off at an age when it would be best to keep them on.

Where are the lesbians tonight, then?' Alan said. 'Why are we talking about them when they're not interested enough to come to the discussion?' 'They're separatismed,' Duncan said.

It's material deprivation that starts all this off." "They've got dishwashers, Miranda," Billa said. "They're not examples of material deprivation.

The last message he'd had from him was on the back of a postcard with a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh on the front, and the farewell message, handwritten in blue biro in Paul's looping, confident hand, had said, 'Suck a black man's cock for me, darling.' He had been spared blindness, then. The next he had heard was a hoarse-voiced man announcing himself as Paul's father, and Paul had died in the hospice.

When I go to bed with a man,' he had said once, and Duncan now said for the benefit of the carriage and the complaining woman, 'I expect him to maintain full erection – full erection – from the moment of nudity onwards . Do I make myself plain? The very first moment of nudity. Anything else – anything that falls short of that – I regard as a personal insult .

When you think of the Gay Plague, it's really for the best these days that we put on a cheerful face and get on with what queens do best.

I'm reading Edmund White. It's so nice. All about Jack Holmes and his great big penis. It's like he's got a little pet in the house that he needs to take for walks sometimes, in the park. I really like it.

This is a good place for thinking about your life, a few days in this place.

I love men, I love books, I can't get enough of them.

Gay men needed lightbulbs too.

The only good drugs are illegal drugs.

People talk about anal sex as though it's the be-all and end-all of gay identity.

Do you not know? No Sicilian will wear underwear for five months. It is just too hot. Oh, the day in September when you have to put on your underwear!

You're the best friend I ever had who I've never been to bed with,' Paul had once said to Duncan.