Writers obviously have to bear witness to the harsh face of the age.

When we love others, we naturally want to talk about them, we want to show them off, like emotional trophies. We invest them with a power to do to others what they do to us; a vain hope, as the lovers of others are rarely of much interest to us. But we listen in patience, as friends must, and as Isabel now did, refraining from comment, other than to encourage the release of the story and the attendant confession of human frailty and hope.

If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.

None of us knows how we will cope with snakes until the moment arises, and then most of us find out that we do not do it very well.

Everybody has friends they dislike; people who they have slipped into relationships with, people they would not have chosen had they been more cautious, more circumspect.

I think that we've made great moral progress in the second half of the 20th century in many respects, and particularly in relation to human rights but I think that we are losing sight of some of the values of concern for others, and self-respect and respect for others.

But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives. Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn't it? - and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever.