There is a country proverb which says, 'If you don't trouble trouble - trouble won't trouble you.

The fact is, for most of us, what happens to ourselves is so much more important than what happens to other people that the smallest mote in our own eye will prevent us from being unduly harrowed by someone else's beam.

There is and always has been for me a peculiar need to write. This is very different from wanting to be a writer. To be a writer always seemed something so far removed from my talents and abilities and imaginings that it didn't afflict me at all as a notion when I was young. But I was always conscious that I wanted to write.

Anyone who pretends not to be interested in money is either a fool or a knave.

it isn't good tactics to ask for something that you know will be refused.

It is always better to say too little than too much.

When you've just made the most complete fool of yourself, you feel the need of a specially high horse to ride.