I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It's very persnickety and old-maidish really, but then when I'm working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.

Unfortunately most ways of making big money take a long time. By the time one has made the money one is too old to enjoy it.

History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.

As a result of 50 years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits... the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied.

My mental hands were empty, and I felt I must do something as a counterirritant or antibody to my hysterical alarm at getting married at the age of 43.

I don't regard James Bond precisely as a hero, but at least he does get on and do his duty, in an extremely corny way.

Never job backwards. What might have been was a waste of time.