One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand.

Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.

The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn.

For God's sake stop making people in your image. Harry was real. He wasn't just your hero and my lover. He was Harry. He was in a racket. He did bad things. What about it? He was the man we knew.

We mustn't complain too much of being comedians - it's an honorable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed - that's all. We are bad comedians, we aren't bad men.

The problem of pretending to be alive.

Rocinante was of more value for a true traveller than a jet plane. Jet planes were for business men.