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

And for at least that moment, I wouldn't have traded the hundreds of books I've read for the few I know almost by heart.

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.

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.

I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.

I never overcame my conviction that writing for commercial television was a kind of prostitution.