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.

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.

It looks too new and pristine ever to have been read by anyone else, but it has been: it keeps falling open at the most delightful places as the ghost of its former owner points me to things I've never read before.

I despair of ever getting it through anybody's head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what's written in the books. I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.

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

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