The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

The world is full of places to which I want to return

...she had always known under her mind and now she confessed it: her agony had been, half of it, because one day he would say farewell to her, like that, with the inflexion of a verb. As, just occasionally, using the word 'we' - and perhaps without intention - he had let her know that he loved her.

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

He added that a Frenchman in the train had given him a great sandwich that so stank of garlic that he had been inclined to throw it at the fellow's head.