Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.

A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.

Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.

There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsiblity of any civilized and democratic country.

Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.