I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.

Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?

Talent is the infinite capacity for taking pains. Genius is the infinite capacity for achievement without taking any pains at all.

I find the treatment of royalty distinctly peculiar. The royal family lives in palaces heavily screened from prying eyes by fences, grounds, gates, guards, all designed to ensure the family absolute privacy. And every newspaper in London carried headlines announcing PRINCESS ANNE HAS OVARIAN CYST REMOVED. I mean you're a young girl reared in heavily guarded seclusion and every beer drinker in every pub knows the precise state of your ovaries.

It's against my principles to buy a book I haven't read, it's like buying a dress you haven't tried on.

What fortune teller would ever have had the nerve to predict that the best years of my life would turn out to be my old age?

History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London.