It was easy to be moral when that was the way you felt anyway. The hard bit about morality was making yourself feel the opposite of what you really felt.

As a writer, I have readers who will have a range of political views. I don't think they look to me for political guidance.

As a writer I've learned certain lessons. One of them is to be careful about how you put a view, and to bear in mind how easily and readily you'll be misinterpreted.

I have always taken the view that one should never hold against a man anything he says after twelve o'clock at night or after a glass or two of anything.

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.

Whatever Scotland was, it was not a matriarchy; whereas the United States was a profoundly matriarchal society - and much more feminine than would be suggested by all that male bravado. That was a front, and a misleading one at that; underneath the male swagger lay a passive acceptance of female dominance - a fact not always appreciated by outsiders.

Small things may be important to us; to be a sometime anything is sometimes something.