«Thousands stand and chant. Around them in the world, people ride escalators going up and sneak secret glances at the faces coming down. People dangle teabags over hot water in white cups. Cars run silently on the autobahns, streaks of painted light. People sit at desks and stare at office walls. They smell their shirts and drop them in the hamper. People bind themselves into numbered seats and fly across time zones and high cirrus and deep night, knowing there is something they've forgotten to do.»

«Makers of empire, they have fought for bigger things than crowns and higher seats than thrones.»

«There are not enough seats in the steel lifeboat for everybody.»

«The addictive semiconscious vice of biblioscopy-having to see what the other person is reading, usually on a train peering over shoulders, bending down to attend simultaneously to a shoelace and a dust jacket, furtively changing seats.»

«There is something remarkably and peculiarly English about the passion for sitting on damp seats watching open-air drama only the English have mastered the art of being truly uncomfortable while facing up to culture.»

«I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.»

«He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.»

«For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; / And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: / Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts? / Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? / But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats? / Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called? / If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: / But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.»

«Those who have free seats at a play hiss first»

«To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them»