you'd like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That must be the most futile oath anyone ever swears.

Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.

the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

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.

Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you.