When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.

If every museum in the New World were emptied, if every famous building in the Old World were destroyed and only Venice saved, there would be enough there to fill a full lifetime with delight. Venice, with all its complexity and variety, is in itself the greatest surviving work of art in the world.

I never can understand how two men can write a book together; to me that's like three people getting together to have a baby.

Most writers in the course of their careers become thick-skinned and learn to accept vituperation, which in any other profession would be unimaginably offensive, as a healthy counterpoise to unintelligent praise.

She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked.

If it could only be like this always - always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper.

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed.