duty, the most indecent of all obsessions, was only another name for love.

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow

That's the purpose of old age... To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did.

duty, the most indecent of all obsessions, was only another name for love.

There's a hell of a lot of horny people out there who are not being gratified in the way they should be.

There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart.

I am writing a sequel to The Touch because I want to further explore the Chinese question that I have raised. There will be more about that in a sequel.