What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own.

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

The main aim of education should be to send children out into the world with a reasonably sized anthology in their heads so that, while seated on the lavatory, waiting in doctors' surgeries, on stationary trains or watching interviews with politicians, they may have something interesting to think about.

I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth foregoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.

It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.

The old middle-class prerogative of being permanently in a most filthy temper.

We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol.