Cruel men cry easily at the cinema.

People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations

A solitary laugh is often a laugh of superiority.

O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever.

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed-he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog.