A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.

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.

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

If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.

Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.

I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.

There's very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made. Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure. . . . A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth's.