Many friends have said to me, 'I never know when you write your books, because I've never seen you writing, or even seen you go away to write.' I must behave rather as dogs do when they retire with a bone; they depart in a secretive manner and you do not see them again for an odd half hour. They return self-consciously with mud on their noses. I do much the same.

Youth is a failing only too easily outgrown.

Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.

Very few of us are what we seem.

I can think of nothing more soul destroying in life than to persist in trying to do a thing you want desperately to do well, and to know that you are at the best second rate.

One of us in this very room is in fact the murderer.

I've always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you.