The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves.

I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.

In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.

Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.

I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost.

Death ... obliterates family resemblance as it does personality: there is no affinity between the living and the dead.

Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people’s money, other people’s safety, other people’s future.