We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.

All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.

It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.