Quotes of the day

A distinctly literary flavour today...

"Hailsham is like a physical manifestation of what we have to do to all children. It is a protected world. To some extent at least you have to shield children from what you know and drip-feed information to them. Sometimes that is kindly meant, and sometimes not. When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence around a child, regulating it. All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma."

Kazuo Ishiguro talks to the Observer about the private boarding school in his new novel Never Let Me Go.

"I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling."

Hunter S Thompson RIP.