ALAN COREN

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.

There are many mysteries in old age but the greatest, surely, is this: in those adverts for walk-in bathtubs, why doesn't all the water gush out when you get in?

Strictly speaking, the land does not exist; it is merely dehydrated sea.

Sadly, as with so much about history's heroes, it's the spotting of potential fame that's the difficulty, whether it's publishing their poems, hanging their paintings, or buying their old underwear. Think of the great men whose lives passed in penury and hacking coughs due to public unawareness that their littlest possession would end up at Sothebys or the basement at Fort Knox.

10.30 Newsnight: What Are The Chances Of World War Three Breaking Out After You Have Gone To Bed?

Being a personality is not the same thing as having a personality.

Jacob is a German Shepherd. (I have never understood why they aren't called German Sheepdogs. What do the Germans call shepherds?)

To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.

Television is more interesting than people. If it were not we should have people standing in the corner of our room.

In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, I know one boy who won't be sweating. I intend to raise my coffin-lid briskly, throw a few things into an overnight bag, and, whistling something appropriate, prepare to meet my Maker.

The Act of God designation on all insurance policies; which means, roughly, that you cannot be insured for the accidents that are most likely to happen to you.

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.

Since both its national products, snow and chocolate, melt, the cuckoo clock was invented solely in order to give tourists something solid to remember it by.

I wonder sometimes if manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

Television is more interesting than people. If it were not we should have people standing in the corner of our room.

Can anything match that first fine discovery of the telephone and all it stood for? That first realization that, contained within ten simple digits, lay the infinitely possible? Out there ... lay six billion ears, all the people in the world available for contact and mystery and insult, unable to resist the beckoning of one small and villainous forefinger.

In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, I know one boy who won't be sweating. I intend to raise my coffin-lid briskly, throw a few things into an overnight bag, and, whistling something appropriate, prepare to meet my Maker.

Strictly speaking, the land does not exist; it is merely dehydrated sea.

All I know of birds to this date is that sparrows are the ones that are not pigeons.

The role of humour is to make people fall down and writhe on the Axminster, and that is the top and bottom of it.

Having lost the last war, they are currently enjoying a "Wirtschaftswunder," which can be briefly translated as "The best way to own a Mercedes is to build one."

Sadly, as with so much about history's heroes, it's the spotting of potential fame that's the difficulty, whether it's publishing their poems, hanging their paintings, or buying their old underwear. Think of the great men whose lives passed in penury and hacking coughs due to public unawareness that their littlest possession would end up at Sothebys or the basement at Fort Knox.

English Bohemianism is a curiously unluscious fruit. ... Inside this hothouse, huge lascivious orchids slide sensuously up the sweating windows, passion-flowers cross-pollinate in wild heliotrope abandon, lotuses writhe with poppies in the sweet warm beds, kumquats ripen, open and plop flatly to the floor-and outside, in a neat, trimly-hoed kitchen-garden, English bohemians sit in cold orderly rows, like carrots.

Being a personality is not the same thing as having a personality.

A humorist tells himself every morning, "I hope it's going to be a rough day." When things are going well, it's much harder to make the right jokes.

Jacob is a German Shepherd. (I have never understood why they aren't called German Sheepdogs. What do the Germans call shepherds?)

There are many mysteries in old age but the greatest, surely, is this: in those adverts for walk-in bathtubs, why doesn't all the water gush out when you get in?

10.30 Newsnight: What Are The Chances Of World War Three Breaking Out After You Have Gone To Bed?

To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.

Disneyworld... is a historical reconstruction as sanitised as the Kremlin's, and a future vision as uncognisant of contemporary pointers as Peter Pan's. It is a magic carpet under which everything has been swept.

Ethnically, the Germans are Teutonic... being made up of Vandals, Gepidae, and Goths, all of whom emigrated - south from Sweden in about 500 BC; why they emigrated is not exactly clear, but many scholars believe it was because they saw the way Sweden was going, i.e. neutral.

The word "souvenir" has, of course, slightly extended itself in meaning until it now denotes almost anything either breakable or useless; but even today, ninety per cent of the items covered by the word are forgettable objects in which cigarettes can be left to go stale.

Malta is the only country in the world where the local delicacy is the bread.