OVERHEARD

Hello. I think we used to be married.

Oliver Gates, first husband of the late Kathleen Tynan, on bumping into her at a party 30 years later, and finding that she appeared not to recognise him, quoted by Dan Topolski in the Independent Don't look.

The world's about to break.

Opening lines of `Poem', the latest work by Harold Pinter, Guardian People like him have great confidence about being in charge of English literature, of being gentlemen. Like the British monarchy, they are fatuous and risible figures.

Tom Paulin, poet and critic, on John Bayley, former Wharton Professor of English at Oxford and chairman of the 1994 Booker Prize judges, Guardian A lot of this film-industry arguing is not about films but about the size of people's willies.

Alan Rickman, actor and now stage director, explaining why his film Mesmer is still unreleased, Observer You're the sickest person I've ever seen! You should be ashamed of yourself! Woman in audience at the ICA, London, to Orlan, the French performance artist, during a screening of a video showing the plastic surgery she has undergone for art's sake, GQ People still ask me where the bath-room is.

M Doughty, former nightclub doorman, now singer with up-and-coming band Soul Coughing, on the difference or lack of it between the two jobs, New Yorker