If you feel compelled to give a New Year's Eve party, don't invite people to arrive too early or they'll go off the boil before midnight.

hurting other people is not excusable because you've been hurt yourself.

I was so flattered that someone wanted me to write a book, I said I would. It was published in 1969.

Without doubt, keep a diary. From the day you're born, keep a diary, because we all forget things so quickly.

The letter of application ... should be a masterpiece of fiction, papering over all the cracks. Get it properly typed on decent writing paper. Never let it run over the page, people get bored with reading.

I think we ought to have a kindness year, or a kindness century.

it's a good idea to wait a few months before joining anything when you arrive at a village. A bookseller friend who retired to nearby Oxfordshire, and was worried he might be bored, got himself on to every village committee in the first six months, and spent the next ten years extricating himself.