‘Why don’t I have a mobile, much less an iPhone or a BlackBerry? While I can afford the economic expense, I cannot afford the emotional expense when it doesn’t work’

‘I found myself in the perverse position of praying, in defiance of my politics, that healthcare legislation would get bogged down. Selfish? Hell, yes!’

‘Every time I talk to my brother, I wonder if it is for the last time...He is actually eating himself to death’

‘The idea that diligent citizens have been putting away money for their retirement with National Insurance contributions is a myth’

‘I'm hereby volunteering to save everyone a bundle and throw in the towel on my last two years’

‘Michael Jackson was a study in shame. He was ashamed of being black, ashamed of being gay’

‘My quasi-Freudian theory about Gordon Brown is that he reminds the electorate collectively of Daddy’

‘We have veritably criminalised making money. The proposition that rich people have rights, too, has flown out the window’

The elegant semi-colon is dying out; it is being replaced by the em-dash—the all-purpose tool of the lazy writer