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Powell in Japan in 1964: At several academic functions attended it was literally impossible--short of picking them up and putting them through the door--to persuade distinguished female professors to pass over the threshold first. Among such learned ladies one could not help feeling moved that some had been persecuted during the war years for their devotion to Jane Austen.

[...] when he dined with Lancaster he learnt from his host that Osbert Sitwell had at first resented that another Osbert should have entered his monde. In due course Sitwell and Lancaster had become friends, so that when Osbert Burdett, a man of letters of a somewhat older vintage who wrote of the Nineties, passed away in the 1930s they lunched a deux to celebrate being left as the sole Osberts [...] in the field.

[Casanova's] Memoirs must be read in their entirety like Shakespeare's Sonnets, Ariosto, Proust. They have the coherence of a well-constructed novel, one of the striking features being the manner in which individuals with whom the writer has been involved crop up again in his life, emphasising those disregarded coincidences referred to earlier.

I remember Muggeridge being quite incensed by George Orwell saying that the depressing thing about political canvassing was not that people wanted the opposite party to be elected, but that they did not know that an election was taking place, what an election was, nor what happened in the House of Commons when you got there.

Russell T Davies's great revolution was to take Doctor Who, a show once about the future but which had been living in the past, and to make it a show of the moment, one which sought to capture the zeitgeist of 2005.

'[...] the cypher was based on the product of two hundred-digit prime numbers, and the National Security Agency had staked its reputation on the claim that the fastest computer in existence could not crack it before the Big Crunch at the end of the Universe.'

For a moment I thought ACC might have invented public key cryptography in 1982--a little research reveals this idea was first publicised in 1978.

ACC has a crack at designing smartphone HMI in 1982:

"[...] a gentle tickling on Floyd's wrist announced an incoming call. He tapped the slim metal band to quench the silent alarm and forestall the audible one, then walked to the nearest of the comsets scattered around the room."

ACC namechecks the most 2001-esque movie:

"For a few days, he had almost regretted the European Space Administration business that had delayed him in Paris; that haggle over the Solaris payload that had saved his life."

We have wasted and defiled our own estate, the beautiful planet Earth. Why should we expect any mercy from a returning Star Child? He might judge all of us as ruthlessly as Odysseus judged Leiodes--"whose head fell rolling in the dust while he was yet speaking"--and despite his timeless, ineffectual plea, "I tried to stop the others."

[...] and even as Discovery hurtled into the thing, beyond all possibility of avoidance, a long-forgotten line of poetry surged up from the depths of his memory. He found himself repeating desperately, like an incantation to ward off disaster: "Childe Harold to the Dark Tower came."

Then the Dark Tower was upon him, and his only regret was that he had seen so much and learned so little.

We had to describe--and to show on the screen--the activities and environments, and perhaps the physical nature, of creatures millions of years ahead of man. This was, by definition, impossible. One might as well expect Moon-Watcher to give a lucid description of David Bowman and his society.

"A long time ago," said Kaminski, "I came across a remark that I've never forgotten--though I can't remember who made it. 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'"

A 'deleted scene' from 2001:

"Isaac Asimov?" said Representative McBurney, "Didn't he give evidence to our committee, a couple of years ago?"

"I'll say he did--he was the lively old boy who wanted to build a high-pressure chemistry lab to study the life reactions that might take place on the giant planets. He got fifteen million out of us by the time he'd finished."

January 8 [1966]. Record day--three thousand words, including some of the most exciting in the book. I got quite scared when the computer started going nuts, being alone in the house with my electric typewriter...

One of Gerry Wellington's strongest addictions was to the detestable spelling-game, Scrabble ... and it was hinted that, when alone together in the house, he and Needham would play tete-a-tete gamesof Scrabble, using combinations of letters of shocking impropriety.

Throughout history prophets and philosophers have argued that if humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan, all law and order would vanish. Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and His all-encompassing plans. God-fearing Syria is a far more violent place than the atheist Netherlands.

Whereas in 2010 obesity and related illnesses killed about 3 million people, terrorists killed a total of 7,697 people across the globe, most of them in developing countries. For the average American or European, Coca-Cola poses a far greater threat than al Qaeda.

Today the main source of wealth is knowledge. And whereas you can conquer oil fields through war, you cannot acquire knowledge that way. Hence as knowledge became the most important economic resource, the profitability of war declined and wars became increasingly restricted to those parts of the world--such as the Middle East and Central Africa--where the economies are still old-fashioned material-based economies.

In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.

In Windmill Street also existed a strange establishment, The Windmill, where nocturnal bacon-and-eggs--served by a grave butler-like personage in a tailcoat, whom a duke would have been proud to employ--could be obtained at any hour of the night until dawn.
The celebrated Vicar of Stiffkey (subsequently defrocked, and devoured by circus lions) was said to patronize The Windmill for the entertainment of prostitutes...

Re his 1920s work colleague A.G. Lewis:

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As we sailed by the shore of Gallipoli, in a brief quite unemphasized ceremony, a wreath was committed to the sea. Some days later I remarked to Bowra that, although the best part of half a century had passed, the moment of the wreath's descent to the waves had been moving, even rather upsetting. I was not prepared for the violence of agreement.

'Had to go below. Lie down for half-an-hour afterwards in my cabin.'

An early foreshadowing of the coincidental encounters that dominate A Dance to the Music of Time -- four-year-old Anthony Powell watches the funeral procession of King Edward VII:

I must, however, have glimpsed for a moment the officer of 2nd Life Guards commanding the escort riding a short way behind the gun-carriage. This was the (5th) Earl of Longford, later killed at Gallipoli; father of my future wife.

The park always seemed to me to be filled with mystery. I once noticed a little girl kneeling in front of an empty seat, her face buried in her hands. For a long time this terrible grief haunted me whenever I thought of it; grasping only years later that she was evidently playing hide-and-seek.