I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.

If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.

Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.

When my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.

I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.

All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.