Sometimes you watch one of your favorite shows from 20 years ago and you think, 'I'm loving this, but golly, it's going at the speed of a snail.'

The business of life is learning that you can't lay down the terms.

My childhood was a happy one, spent in a tall house in South Kensington and later in East Sussex, but my early and mid teens were less successful.

Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them.

The moment I was introduced to my wife, Emma, at a party I thought, here she is - and 20 minutes later I told her she ought to marry me. She thought I was as mad as a rat. She wouldn't even give me her telephone number - and she wrote in her diary: "A funny little man asked me to marry him."

I don't think I'm an unkind person, I don't think my books are unkind, and I don't think my readers are unkind.

To me, all success is a delightful surprise, since one can absolutely never predict it.