My generation was somewhat between things, neither free nor much supported by whatever held us in.

The sign said 'The Green Turtle, Chelonia myadas, is the source of turtle soup....' I am the source of William G. soup if it comes to that. Everyone is the source of his or her kind of soup. In a town as big as London, that's a lot of soup walking around.

Sometimes I think that the biggest difference between men and women is that more men need to seek out some terrible lurking thing in existence and hurl themselves upon it. Women know where it lives but they can let it alone.

I believe that most of us would like to be thought well of by horses.

Words have a life; without response they die.

The first thing I would say to young writers is, "Don't do it, unless you can't stand not to do it." And the second thing I would say is, "If you do do it, and get into it, the constant rule you should have in mind is to explore your material." It sounds simple, but it isn't, because people often want to get from A to B, and they don't stop to look at what is in the material.

When I write a book, I don't have a plan or an outline. The characters move the action, and the action develops the characters. When I write a book, I become an actor, really, taking the role of the person who is speaking or acting at the time, and so their reactions to whatever they see are my reactions.