Quotes from Kyril Bonfiglioli

I very carefully levered up an eyelid and shut it again fast. A merciless sunbeam had squirted straight in, making my brain bleed.

Bed is the only place for protracted telephoning. It is also execellently suited to reading, sleeping and listening to canaries. It is not a good place for sex: sex should take place in armchairs, or in bathrooms, or on lawns which have been brushed but not too recently mown, or on sandy beaches if you happen to have been circumcised. If you are too tired to have intercourse except in bed you are probably too tired anyway and should be husbanding your strength.

It was still only nine o'clock when I set off on the last leg of my journey, feeling old and dirty and incapable. You probably know the feeling if you are over eighteen.

I never think of policemen's wives; their beauty maddens me like wine.

I very carefully levered up an eyelid and shut it again fast. A merciless sunbeam had squirted straight in, making my brain bleed.

There's nothing like gunfire to drive the glamour from words.

My flight was announced by Donald Duck noises from a loudspeaker; I arose and shuffled off towards the statistical improbability of dying in an airplane crash. Personally, the thought of such a death appalls me little – what civilized man would not rather die like Icarus than be mangled to death on a Motorway by a Ford Popular?

she looked about as hard to get as a haircut and at about the same price.

I never drink alcohol. I do not like to blunt my senses.' 'Goodness,' I babbled, 'but how awful for you. Not drinking, I mean. I mean, imagine getting up in the morning knowing that you're not going to feel any better all day.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth is an awakening without tea!

toward the end she was she was wearing nothing but seven beads, four of them sweat

We know that death is the only end of art. A chap who has gone to all the trouble of strangling his wife is entitled to his moment of splendour on the gallows – it is a crime to make him sew mailbags like a common thief.

When depressed, go and find someone to salute you.

Jock byl vmžiku u mne a vnutil mi do ztuhlých prst? jednu ze svých proslulých brandy se sodou. (Tajemství proslulých Jockových brandy se sodou spo?ívá v tom, že je dÄ›lá bez sody; je to jednoduchý trik, který si každý snadno osvojí.)

Destroying the painting was out of the question: my soul is all stained and shagged with sin like a cigarette smoker's moustache but I am quite incapable of destroying works of art. Steal them, yes, cheerfully, it is a mark of respect and love, but destroy them, never.

she looked about as hard to get as a haircut and at about the same

these people believe that they are the doctors of society, whereas in fact they are only the disease.

The English are quite mad, from the lowest to the highest, but I think they will conquer the world for they are the only folk (excepting the brash Americans who do not count) who know that they are right in all things

How do you know I don't take sugar?' I asked rebelliously. 'No gentleman takes sugar in black coffee. Besides, it's bad for you.

Pouting is one of those dying arts; Mrs Spon can do it, so can the boy who creates my shirts, but it's almost as rare nowadays as tittering and sniggering.

Sleep is not, with me, a mere switching off: it is a very positive pleasure to be supped and savoured with expertise. It was a good night; sleep pampered me like a familiar, salty mistress who yet always has a new delight with which to surprise her jaded lover.

I ate a great quantity of turbot, some boiled mutton and a few nicely-dressed woodcocks, each set upon a toast which had been spread with the bird's "trails", peppered. "Trails" means guts. I also drank some wine.

Martland has only two personalities – Wilde and Eeyore.

that season when we remind each other of the judicial murder of a Jewish revolutionary two thousand years ago by distributing chocolate eggs to the children of people we dislike.