I'm not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.

I'm not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.

I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.

Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.

I don't write books inadvertently.

I very much dislike the intolerance and moralism of many Christians, and feel more sympathy with Honest Doubters than with them.

It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.