I don't know if I have a voice of my own. I don't see me being an important person with something to say. I haven't. I've got nothing to say. My opinion is of no consequence or value.

He stood beneath the white tower, and looked up at it with that mournful expression which his face always carried in repose: for one moment he thought of climbing up its cracked and broken stone, and then from its summit screaming down at the silent city as a child might scream at a chained animal.

I don't in any sense think of myself as a celebrity, which of course I'm not.

There are two types of people, you see. One type keep their heads straight, and look around as they walk. The others look up - at the tops of houses, at the eaves and the lintels and the roofs, which can tell you when they were built - and I've always done that.

I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about.

The English have always been greedy for news of times past, with that mixture of fatalism and melancholy which is part of the national character.

I think biography can be more personal than fiction, and certainly can be more expressive.