Leo, sadly, has Parkinsons, but he used to cook all sorts of dazzling things.

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.

People always assume that bachelors are single by choice and spinsters because nobody asked them. It never enters their heads that poor bachelors might have worn the knees of their trousers out proposing to girls who rejected them or that a girl might deliberately stay unmarried.

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.

Always be nice to everyone in the firm on the way up. You never know who you may meet on the way down.

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

People who can write a book usually do.