Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness when a glorious idea comes to mind and, secondly, when a last page has been written and you haven't had time to know how much better it ought to be.

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.

Childhood, catching our imagination when it is fresh and tender, never lets go of us.

Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.

It had the old double keyboard, an entirely different set of keys for capitals and figures, so that the paper seemed a long way off, and the machine was as big and solid as a battle cruiser. Typing was then a muscular activity. You could ache after it. If you were not familiar with those vast keyboards, your hand wandered over them like a child lost in a wood. The noise might have been that of a shipyard on the Clyde. You would no more have thought of carrying one of those grim structures as you would have thought of travelling with a piano.

I fancy that the Hell of Too Many People would occupy a respectable place in the hierarchy of infernal regions.

Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something bovine about them.