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

Art is rare and sacred and hard work, and there ought to be a wall of fire around it.

Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare.

With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.

Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

I was always on my oddy knocky.

What's it going to be then, eh?