I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.

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

The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.

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

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

A letter is paradoxically the most revealing and the most deceptive of confessional revelations. We all have our inconsistencies, prejudices, irrationalities which, although strongly felt at the time, may be transitory. A letter captures the mood of the moment. The transitory becomes immutably fixed, part of the evidence for the prosecution or the defence.

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more ­effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.