Everything was in stark and dreadful contrast with the trivial crises and counterfeit emotions of Hollywood, and I returned to England deeply moved and emotionally worn out.

Clairvoyant, Hornblower could foresee that in a year's time, the world would hardy remember the incident. In twenty years, it would be entirely forgotten. Yet those headless corpses up there in Muzillac; those shattered redcoats; those Frenchmen caught in the four-pounder's blast of canister -- they were as dead as if it had been a day in which history had been changed.

I thank God daily for the good fortune of my birth, for I am certain I would have made a miserable peasant.

A man who writes for a living does not have to go anywhere in particular, and he could rarely afford to if he wanted.

I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.

When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.

The work is with me when I wake up in the morning; it is with me while I eat my breakfast in bed and run through the newspaper, while I shave and bathe and dress.