I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time, but I can alter its Posture and, as Boys do turn a looking-glass against the Sunne, so I will dazzle you all.

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding.

I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us.

London' is a gallery of sensation of impressions. It is a history of London in a thematic rather than a chronological sense with chapters of the history of smells, the history of silence, and the history of light. I have described the book as a labyrinth, and in that sense in complements my description of London itself.

Familial love can find an echo in our own hearts just as it did in that of Charles Dickens.

The best years are when you know what you're doing.