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.

The fact is, people who don't have any misfortunes are very irritating to their neighbours. No opportunities for popping in with condolences and new-laid eggs. No visits to the afflicted. No opportunities for the milk of human kindness to flow. Naturally it doesn't.

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

Money's a very serious thing - especially when you haven't got any.

Once a suggestion has entered the general atmosphere of human thought, it is very difficult to neutralise it.

Being in a rage was rather like being out in a thunderstorm - you couldn't hear yourself think.