I still occasionally need to struggle but I now fear it less. The weapons I fight it with are also my consolations: books, music, food, wine, nature.

Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?

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

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

The world is full of people who have lost faith: politicians who have lost faith in politics, social workers who have lost faith in social work, schoolteachers who have lost faith in teaching and, for all I know, policemen who have lost faith in policing and poets who have lost faith in poetry. It's a condition of faith that it gets lost from time to time, or at least mislaid.