I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.

How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.

I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.

The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.

The businessman who is a novelist is able to drop in on literature and feel no suicidal loss of esteem if the lady is not at home, and he can spend his life preparing without fuss for the awful interview.

It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.