The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.

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.

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

All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.

I wonder if childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young would leave one always seeking to recapture the unobtainable. Like those people who were always happiest at school or university. Always going back. No reunion ever missed. It always seemed to me rather pathetic.

If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.

There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsiblity of any civilized and democratic country.