For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.

My concern is less the monarchy as such than the attempt of a fading colonial power to hang onto grandeur.

Busyness, I feel increasingly, is the writer's curse and downfall. You read too much and write too readily, you become cut off from your inner life, from the flow of your own thoughts, and turned far too much towards the outside world.

You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.

[H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.

By the tits of Holy Agnes

I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?