If you are unwilling to fail, sometimes publicly and even catastrophically, you will never be rich.

Great Expectations [book by Charles Dickens] has been described as "Dickens's harshest indictment of society." Which it is. After all, it's about money. About not having enough money; about the fever of the getting of money; about having too much money; about the taint of money.

I want to prove that if you write in strict meter and rhyme about subjects people care about, they will buy poetry.

I couldn't care less what anyone's 'perception' of me is. I'm too long in the tooth to care.

I've always noted with some awe the reading habits of the Australian public. Australians read more newspapers and magazines per head of population than almost any other country in the world.

I thoroughly object to getting old. If you could let me be 16 again, I'd give you everything I've got and everything I'll ever have.

I cannot abide being bored.