A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

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.

If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy..." 469

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

[Margaret Thatcher] said there was no thing such as society. This is what I find so interesting psychologically. Where did she come from? She had no mother. Her father came from a very identifiable background: religious, highly conformist.

I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel.