Spike Milligan

“Life wasn't too bad. The trouble with Man was, even while he was having a good time, he didn't appreciate it. Why, thought Milligan, this very moment might be the happiest in me life. The very thought of it made him miserable.”

“I am afraid that, like Timon of Athens, I just cannot let go of my friendships.”

“A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree.”

“Money couldn't buy friends, but you got a better class of enemy.”

“One important thing I recall about India was that it was quiet. It was never noisy in the way that life was noisy in London.”

“I remember lying out in my bed and looking at the vast, quiet sky. Right up above my head, there were three stars in a row, and I remember thinking, 'Well, I'll have those three stars all my life, and wherever I am, they will be. They are my stars, and they belong to me.'”

“The lunacy continues and has every chance of becoming a way of life unless we stop it soon. Men are getting so used to wars that the psychiatric wing of the RAMC are planning how to break the news to the men when the war is over.”

“I don't think of depression as contagious. Other depressed people challenge the idea - which can be very persistent and irritating - that there is something odd about you: that you are unique with regard to this wretched state.”

“Driver Shepherd and I had been detailed to drive Lt. Budden in the Wireless Truck. We had been standing by vehicles for an hour, and nothing had happened, but it happened frequently.”

“Busty’ Roberts had joined the Royal Artillery in 1914 and since then had steadily risen to the rank of Gunner. Now the crunch: someone with a perverted sense of humour made him a Lance Bombardier. Roberts went insane with power. The war now consisted of two people, him and Hitler.”

“We come across thirty or so hurried graves with makeshift wooden markers. 'Private Edwards, E.', a number, and that was all. Fourteen days ago he was alive, thinking feeling, hoping... If war was a game of cards, I'd say someone was cheating.”

“Things began to improve when I went to Rangoon. To begin with, my father was promoted, which meant he was at home more. The matriarchal society was ended, and for the first time, I went to a boys' school.”

“Is the modern social pattern of unending change and movement the cause of two modern diseases, insecurity and dissatisfaction? How lucky Thomas Hood was to be able to write, 'I remember, I remember the house where I was born.' I don't even know what mine looked like!”

“I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.”

“R.I.P.Tom Conlon O'Rourke.Not Dead, just Sleeping.”

“Some people live a nothing life: the most important thing they ever do is die. Thank God for eccentrics! Take Gunner Octavian Neat. He would suddenly appear naked in a barrack room and say, “Does anybody know a good tailor?”, or “Gentlemen – I think there’s a thief in the battery.” He was the bane of the Regiment.”

“I had stopped going to church the moment I joined the Regiment. No more could my mother nag me into God's presence.”

“(On his gravestone): "I told you I was ill".”

“I spent many years laughing at Harry Secombe's singing until somebody told me that it wasn't a joke.”

“As I kept having episodes of depression, I realized that it was not a one-off: that I had, well, not a disease, really - more an illness.”