Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.

Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.

The egotism of people who are eminent without being in the least distinguished and somehow feeling that's their due - that seems to me to be a peculiarly English phenomenon.

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.

Everything seems fine until you're about 40. Then something is definitely beginning to go wrong. And you look in the mirror with your old habit of thinking, 'While I accept that everyone grows old and dies, it's a funny thing, but I'm an exception to that rule.

Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.