A. A. Gill

Every man imagines that he will turn his suit like a double agent, that it can be twisted to his will with irony or comedy, that the man can undermine its origins.

There's no pleasing the British, or winning their favor. They simply hate politicians. All politicians. Hatred goes with politicians like mint sauce with lamb. It's as old as Parliaments.

Being able to afford everything you desire is not, by any means, the worst thing that can happen to you. But, depressingly, and more profoundly, neither is it the best.

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

Money has to be an explosion of excitement and opportunity, yet we already secretly know that it doesn't do what it promises. Nothing has ever given us as much pleasure as our pocket money when we were 12, or our first wage at the end of that first exhausting week, paid in folded cash.

If New York is a wise guy, Paris a coquette, Rome a gigolo and Berlin a wicked uncle, then London is an old lady who mutters and has the second sight. She is slightly deaf, and doesn't suffer fools gladly.

So, being a good man is not an exam or a qualification, it changes, and it incorporates being a good friend, a good father, a good employee, a good boss, a good neighbour and a good citizen.

I don't have prejudices against anybody. I have opinions, based on a lifetime's experience.

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.

Texting isn't writing. It's not like letter writing. Texting is short scriptwriting. It's a collaborative soap opera where nothing happens.

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.

Everyone has to go to a funeral at some time and you need to be dark and sombre, and in a black tie.

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.

Boredom is not a thing. It's not a feeling or a condition. It is the absence of feelings, things and conditions.

Shorts are silly. Men in shorts are silly men. And silly is the very worst thing a man can be.

This is the trouble with cheating: there are no acceptable rules, or laws. It could be a smile, or dancing to a song that you considered to be indefinably 'ours'. It can feel like cheating to go to a restaurant that you used to go to with someone else. Keeping photographs of exes can infuriate, like retrospective cheating.

I can tell very quickly when people are lying.

So much of life is not about whether you're good or bad, or right or wrong, or can afford or not afford - it's just about timing.

The part that makes you unique is the bit people will like or fear, fall in love with, or try to avoid.

Because there is no better tool for writing than experience. It has very little to do with grammar and everything to do with knowing.

Personal adornment is the only cultural form that everybody in the world takes part in.

Twenty is a tough age because it slips past in the middle of so much else - university, gap year, leaving home, getting jobs.

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.

If you're bored, it's because someone else is fulfilling his dream. Become a bore. It's the most interesting thing you'll ever do.

My only piece of advice is that all of you consider every single text and Snapchat that you ever make as also being shared with your partner, because they all check your phones all the time - trust me on this one.

I tell you, once a girl's got a dose of novels she's a pushover for iambic pentameter.

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.

It is impossible to be taken seriously in shorts. No one has ever cared about anything said by a man in shorts.

No 13-year-old or over should ever be seen in trousers that finish above the ankle. It doesn't matter how good your legs are, or if you're on a beach in Bermuda where they invented the things.

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.

And learn to tie a bow - it's not difficult and there's no excuse for either a clip-on or the hideous Hollywood straight tie.

All people from small islands dance funny.

Writing, for me, is the great organiser. It's while writing that I think most deeply about things.

I'm terribly prone to anxiety. I get very depressed and I get very anxious and my anxiety is almost always about my children.

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

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

When I joined the Sunday Times the people I was competing with were all 10 or 15 years younger, they all had double firsts from Oxford or Cambridge, they were all bright as new pins.

We have to thank the members of the Romantic movement for the sober colours of suits. It was their love of the Gothic that put us in grey and black but the suit stuck.

A cravat has to be approached with consummate self-confidence and a devilish nonchalance. A cravat has to be grasped by a man who knows how to treat a cravat.

Bald isn't like being ethnic or disabled. Everyone can and will make jokes about it and expect you to laugh good-naturedly, which you will.

The real question is: if you knew there was a god, would you behave any differently? And if the answer is yes, then perhaps you should assume there is.

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.

Songs are all poetry, and they don't make any sense.

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.

London is a city of ghosts; you feel them here. Not just of people, but eras. The ghost of empire, or the blitz, the plague, the smoky ghost of the Great Fire that gave us Christopher Wren's churches and ushered in the Georgian city.

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

I generally only eat one meal a day, which is pretty unusual for a restaurant reviewer. It's not that I have a problem with food; I'll eat anything that doesn't involve a bet, a dare, or an initiation ceremony.