When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?

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

But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.

Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.

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.

we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.

I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn't see the skull beneath the skin.