Addictions do come in handy sometimes: at least you have to get out of bed for them.

Screw-top wine has improved the quality of life by about ten percent, wouldn't you say?

I think writers are excited by stupidity and bad behavior, generally.

Style is not neutral; it gives moral directions.

My literary career kicked off in 1956 when, as a resident of Swansea, South Wales, I published my first novel, 'Lucky Jim.

That certain snobbery of certainly the Parisian - combined with a complete denial of your historical legacy, is just awful. That's a funny thing about France. Saul Bellow wrote somewhere that he saw right through the French. He lived there. He wrote The Adventures of Augie March in Paris, and there's no one better than him to say what's unbearable about the French.

No-one is going to sit down and read Bleak House to the family any more, but they can all huddle up happily in front of Charles Bronson.