It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened.

It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent; but there is talent in the tongues.

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

A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.

One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.

Prep school, public school, university: these now tedious influences standardize English autobiography, giving the educated Englishman the sad if fascinating appearance of a stuffed bird of sly and beady eye in some old seaside museum. The fixation on school has become a class trait. It manifests itself as a mixture of incurious piety and parlour game.

It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?