Overheard

Every damn fool thing that you think nobody will utter will sure enough be uttered the next day. Swift would have been defeated by America.

Robert Hughes, art critic and

author of the forthcoming The

Culture of Complaint, Guardian

I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin.

Leonard Cohen, singer-

songwriter, Daily Telegraph

Every true work of art is

an enigma.

Ben Okri, novelist,

National Gallery News

The culture has changed. The Eighties were about form, not content. Radio is about content and ideas, not form.

John Lloyd, producer of Spitting

Image and bidder for the

first radio comedy franchise,

Daily Telegraph

I'll speak for the same length of time as the average English batsman lasted at the crease in India - five seconds.

Jonathan Agnew, Sports Reporter

of the Year, Sony Radio Awards

Women write and say how awful I am - silly hair, silly face, silly teeth. I don't blame them. I am quite silly.

Jilly Cooper, novelist, Radio Times