And the fact is that millions of opiates addicts having given up their habit without medical assistance. - Theodore Dalrymple

Blanket compassion will shift the distribution decisively towards the manipulative end of the spectrum, and may paradoxically decrease the compassion with which the genuinely despairing are treated: for they are apt to get lost in the great mass of pseudo-distress and manipulation, and often their conduct draws less attention precisely because it is less attention-seeking.

Never has so much indifference masqueraded as so much compassion; never has there been such willful blindness. The once pragmatic English have become a nation of sleepwalkers.

Everybody uses mime and gesture in real life, though we don’t realize it. It’s very useful as a performance technique, though it can be boring to watch on its own. As for radio, I had a wonderful teacher. I was hugely lucky. I didn’t want to play a robot, but the situation was an object lesson in fate taking over.