Dennis Potter

“I decided to call my cancer 'Rupert', after Rupert Murdoch...”

“We are the detectives in our own lives. The clues are everywhere.”

“When you see an apple, you see the redness of the apple... That's what I'm trying to see. I call it the 'isness' of things.”

“The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous.”

“My only regret is to die four pages too soon. If I can finish, then I'm quite happy to go.”

“The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouth they've been in.”

“Childhood is a kingdom where nobody dies.”

“I see the world in terms of dialogue and scenes and characters. I don't see it in any other way.”

“The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence.”

“It's a terrible thing to be a writer. It's a joy and a terror, a real torment.”

“We're all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.”

“Religion, it seems to me, is the backstage of the theatre of cruelty.”

“I think television has betrayed the meaning of the word 'dialogue'.”

“Memory is the editor.”

“The one thing that links all my work is this idea of the past and the present being simultaneous.”

“All fiction is a process of imagining.”

“The worst thing that can happen to a writer is to be understood.”

“We're all looking for a narrative, a story in our lives. That's the search.”

“I think the only real morality is a kind of compassion, a kind of forgiveness.”

“The fact that we are all going to die is the most important thing to know about life.”