My father always had doubts about the Booker prize, although they evaporated on the announcement that he had won it.

Don't dumb down; always write for your top five percent of readers.

America has had much more respect for its writers because they had to define what America was. America wasn't sure what it was.

You see tragedy requires persons of heroic stature. It works on the principle of people being more than humansuper-humanand also being only too human. But there just aren't many great figures around now, so the tragic mechanisms can't work.

I am, incidentally, the only writer to have received the Somerset Maugham award twice - the first time for my first novel, the second time for my second first novel.

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

Tennis: the most perfect combination of athleticism, artistry, power, style, and wit. A beautiful game, but one so remorselessly travestied by the passage of time.