Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

I wouldn't take the Pope too seriously. He's a Pole first, a pope second, and maybe a Christian third.

From my experience of life I believe my personal motto should be: 'Beware of any man bringing flowers.

Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.

It's a whydunnit in q-sharp major and it has a message: never talk to the sort of girls that you wouldn't leave lying about in your drawing-room for the servants to pick up.

You look for one thing and you find another.

Fiction to me is a kind of parable. You have got to make up your mind it's not true. Some kind of truth emerges from it, but it's not fact.