I'm a hopeless 19th-century romantic.

It's great people still care about books, and it's great you can still fashion a life from literature.

That's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business.

The white May blossom swooned slowly into the open mouth of the grave.

Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.

The trouble with you, Vic," he said, "is that you think of the world as a sort of huge museum with too many visitors allowed in.

Life is tragic but it's equally comic.