All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.

the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.

Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.

Most of my life I have needed more time to be on my own.

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.

Any visitor to an historic country town or city quickly becomes aware in his or her peregrinations that the most attractive houses in the centre are invariably the offices of lawyers.