read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.

When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?

What was so terrible about grief was not grief itself, but that one got over it.

No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.

What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.