I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.

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

It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.

Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports.

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.

The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves.

He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is." Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?