This (writing) is the love of your life. It's what I want to do when I wake up. Nothing feels so absorbing, so fulfilling.

Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.

When it comes to flying, I am a nervous passenger but a confident drinker and Valium-swallower.

When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.

The middle class is doing fine in fiction. But it's not what gets me going. I love the working class, and everyone from it I've met, and think they're incredibly witty, inventive - there's a lot of poetry there.

Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.

The only writer who gives me unfeigned pleasure is P.G. Wodehouse. And even him I find a bit heavy. He takes a lot out of me. Scratching my hair, with soft whistles, with lips aquiver, I frown over Sunset at Blandings.