Quotes from A. A. Gill

I don't do dinner parties. I have people come to share the food I've cooked for the family.

I don't go to the openings of shops or parties given by people I don't know.

Other people's traditions look charming and decorative and exotic. They're nice places to visit on holiday, but you wouldn't want to live with one.

I'm too vain to go on TV. I'd be a monster of self-consciousness. Plus, I've got a ridiculous voice - I sound like a camp friend of Bertie Wooster's.

The one thing politicians will always vote for is more politics, so in 2000 they invented the post of mayor of London without ever really thinking what it was a mayor would do.

The answer is that if God exists, he doesn't seem to mind if you believe in him or not.

Gordon Brown is a character from a tragic opera, twisted by ambition and a Presbyterian sense of fateful destiny. He has waited 13 years, mostly in Tony Blair's shadow, for this poisoned chalice and has a pessimist's luck.

In fact, everybody should wake up smelling nice. I go further, there is not an excuse, ever, not to smell nice, particularly your feet.

Trying to learn to be a good man is like learning to play tennis against a wall. You are only a good man - a competent, capable, interesting and lovable man - when you're doing it for, or with, other people.

The measure of a man's life is how he copes with the terrible wall of fear.

People collect boredom, they hoard it, they wallow in it, hoping that one day it'll be of interest and become an effete ennui. Let me tell you, it doesn't.

You can propose marriage naked or in handcuffs, but no one is going to agree to forsake all others for a man in shorts. You can't declare war in shorts or deliver a eulogy in shorts.

There are five great ages of man - five moments when you need to reevaluate everything, clear out the cupboard and the wardrobe, and most importantly, your head. They are 13, 20, 30, 40 and 60. All men need to know this.

I'm frightened of my innate vanity. I mean: the suits lined with scarves? Even I know the warning signs. I could quite easily end up in a tiny Playboy mansion, all on my own.

I don't remember ever stealing things, but I suppose I was endlessly borrowing money off people.

Really, I like the future. I appreciate my automatic alarm-call necklace in case I get lost and confused in a mall. I appreciate the watch that tells the hospital my blood pressure's gone ballistic. I like my computer, just as long as it doesn't get ideas above its workstation.

Penicillin and plastic bags help a lot, fridges and hot water make manliness more comfortable and Tom Ford's fragrance range makes it smell better, but the idea that has pushed our lives into the light more than any other -ism or -ology is feminism.

The more there is on offer, the more you don't want. Fifty options of cereal does not hone an epicurean expertise in the finer points of puffed rice, it murders appetite.

Clothes maketh the man. They don't make you some other man.

The Lib-Dems are sidekicks. They were born to be sidekicks and that's what they should concentrate on being.

A lot of London's image never was. There never was a Dickensian London, or a Shakespearean London, or a swinging London.

Nature gave you your look and there's only a limited amount you can do about that, but what you wear is the skin you choose for yourself.

Cowboy boots you can't wear unless you actually are a cowboy or in a Status Quo tribute band, or over 60; there's something about a retiring gent in cowboy boots that looks sort of presidential.

People who know there is a god and people who know there isn't live in exactly the same world. Same number of hours in the day, same weather, same football results. They both love their children and die of the same diseases.