The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.

A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.

Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.

I think art is sublimated libido. You can’t be a eunuch priest, and you can’t be a eunuch artist.

...We're a government that believes in everybody having the illusion of free will.

A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.

Elgar is not manic enough to be Russian, not witty or pointilliste enough to be French, not harmonically simple enough to be Italian and not stodgy enough to be German. We arrive at his Englishry by pure elimination.