Quotes from Jeffrey Bernard

There's nothing undignified about lying about all day and being waited on by servants, sipping bloody champagne.

In most betting shops you will see three windows marked 'Bet Here', but only one window with the legend 'Pay Out'.

When I was a boy, I naively thought that this thing called happiness would be something I would wake up to find every day once I could smoke, drink and fornicate.

One of the things that goes with getting older is that one becomes more conservative - and I emphasise that when I use the word conservative I do not mean politically.

As for asking me have I ever felt remorse after drinking, I have been living with remorse for years now. She wakes me up every morning. She puts me to bed at night and yea though I run through the valley of Oxford St to the Coach & Horses she is by my side.

My misdeeds are accidental happenings and merely the result of having been in the wrong bar or bed at the wrong time, say most days between midday and midnight.

Yes, I don't think hell will be a lot different from where I'm at now. In fact I'm fairly well convinced that I died in 1932 and this is it. I mean, just look at Norman in the Coach. All he needs is a trident in one hand -- I must get him to take his shoes off to see if he's got cloven hooves -- and there's your devil.

Oh, the self-importance of fading stars. Never mind, they will be black holes one day.

One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.

I once had to dispense with a literary agent because she drank too much. She was very surprised but I pointed out to her, quite logically I thought, that one of us had to be sober and it certainly wan't going to be me.

Give someone half a page in a newspaper and they think they own the world.

Incidentally, I don't see why the wine is as expensive as it is in the country that makes the stuff. Perhaps they can see you coming.

Take my last wife. We get on like a house on fire. Last week she took me out to a splendid dinner, she buys me presents, calls me 'old bean' and even phones the Coach and Horses to see whether I've snuffed it or not. But final and damning proof of the failure of our divorce is that she still laughs at my jokes. I wouldn't swap her for a wife.

I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.

Journalism is a function, like going to the lavatory, best done at home and not talked about.

Journalism is the only thinkable alternative to working.

Life is far too short to bear malice, I always say. You play the cards you're dealt, as I did once with Richard Harris at Shepperton Studios. The fact that I lost every penny I had -- he wouldn't play house rules -- and that he wouldn't even give me the fare home matters not a fig and is now so blurred in my memory it is hardly worth mentioning.

In most betting shops you will see three windows marked "Bet Here," but only one window with the legend "Pay Out."

When I was a boy, I naively thought that this thing called happiness would be something I would wake up to find every day once I could smoke, drink and fornicate.

Although I have to admit I have despised a couple of people simply because they have never had a job in their lives.

It's not name dropping, but not many people can say, like me, that they spent the day with the likes of Francis Bacon or that boring drunk Dylan Thomas. You don't forget things like that.

I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.

I don't remember ever being full of dislike and hatred for people, like some kids I've come across now.

One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.