[London] is sentimental and tolerant. The attitude to foreigners is like the attitude to dogs: Dogs are neither human nor British, but so long as you keep them under control, give them their exercise, feed them, pat them, you will find their wild emotions are amusing, and their characters interesting.

The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.

The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.

It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.

The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature.

Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.

Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.