But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.

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

But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.

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

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

If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.

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?