There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

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.

When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask.

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

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

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

The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.