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.

There is something infinitely dingy about the word workshop. Pray that England doesn't become a nation of workshopkeepers.

A lot of meetings are held to arrange when to have meetings. ... Meetings today are usually called conferences to make them sound more significant.

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

Go to lots of interviews, at least one a month even when you don't need a job, to keep in training for when you do.

The memo's chief function ... is as a track-coverer, so that you can turn on someone six months later and snarl: 'Well, you should have known about it, I sent you a memo.

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.