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.

Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.

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

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.

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.

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism . . . The only way to react is to get up in the morning and start the day by saying four or five vastly politically incorrect things before breakfast!

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