At its grandest, political correctness is an attempt to accelerate evolution.

Every 10 years you're a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They're full of new rewards.

Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I'm too afraid to and have to eat it anyway.

Let me assure you that the humourless as a bunch don't just not know what's funny, they don't know what's serious. They have no common sense, either, and shouldn't be trusted with anything.

There's a lot of anti-intellectualism in Britain. And the writer's views on this or that are really of less importance, as they see it, than that of the man in the street.

He didn't want to please his readers. He wanted to stretch them until they twanged.

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