Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.

Get a life. A real life. Not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.

We almost manage to forget that things happen that we don't anticipate.

London opens to you like a novel itself. [...] It is divided into chapters, the chapters into scenes, the scenes into sentences; it opens to you like a series of rooms, door, passsage, door. Mayfair to Piccadilly to Soho to the Strand.

When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.

All the things we don’t say, all the words we swallow, and it makes nothing but trouble.

I'm going to live long enough to live in an America that will assume universal health care is a basic right. That will be amusing and terrific.