Books of quotations ... afford me one of the most undemanding but satisfying forms of reading pleasure.

We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.

I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.

For me, the dead remain dead. If I couldn't believe that, I don't think I could go on living.

Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.

Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin.

We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.