To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.

We only need to wear shoes because the British built roads which hurt our feet.

Any book has behind it all the other books that have been written.

It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going.

I don't write out of fear. I write out of a strong urge to meet death on its own eternal terms, because the fact is that if you write as little as a page of prose-even bad prose-that is eternal.

But don't think that it's a system or a culture or a state or a person that does the letting down. It's our expectations that let us down. It begins in the warmth of the womb and the discovery that it's cold outside. But it's not the cold's fault that it's cold.

For no man is damned precisely because God hath not chosen him, because he is not elected, but because he is a sinner, and doth wilfully refuse the means of grace offered.