If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.

My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.

Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.

My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.

A writer should have another lifetime to see if he's appreciated.

A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships

Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.