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.

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

when married people begin to talk about their rights, it means something has gone pretty far wrong between them.

there are virtues which are very well in the abstract, but which, encountered in the flesh, can be a source of extreme irritation.

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.

I do not approve of children being beaten. It is always a confession of failure.

Nobody likes to be accused of a virtue.