The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.

I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.

Like childhood, old age is irresponsible, reckless, and foolhardy. Children and old people have everything to gain and nothing much to lose. It's middle-age which is cursed by the desperate need to cling to some finger-hold halfway up the mountain, to conform, not to cause trouble, to behave well.

The freedom to make a fortune on the stock exchange has been made to sound more alluring than freedom of speech.

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

When... I told my father I wanted to be a writer, he had asked me to consider my unfortunate wife, who would have me about the house all day 'wearing a dressing gown, brewing tea and stumped for words'.

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