“That's the trouble with people like you, Knight, you only know how to mock. How to break things. You don't know how to create anything. You never did.”

“It was partly the buzz you get at any big fight but also there was the build-up of static brought on by the rustling of pacamacs, and which had on occasion, so they said, given rise to the appearance of ball-lightning at these events.”

“The train slowed down at the approach to shrewsbury station and glided between the eleventh-century abbey and the stadium of shrewsbury town football club. Two sacred arenas where men chanted and waited for a miracle that never came.”

“How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what is yours?”

“As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.”

“You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress ... No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition, whites show towards me, as far as I am concerned, as long as it is not shown to everyone of our people in this country, it doesn't exist for me.”

“Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today.”