I know many older writers who were very successful and whose books are now out of print, so you have to go to antiquarian booksellers to buy their fifth or eighth novel or whatever it is.

To live as an artist requires hard work or some extraordinary good fortune to come your way.

Dignity was the first quality to be abandoned when the heart took over the running of human affairs.

It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people,we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.

We never love anyone. Not really. We only love our idea of another person. It is some conception of our own that we love. We love ourselves, in fact.

There is a disconnect between the film Bond and the literary Bond which is their contemporaneity. I don't suffer from that.

I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation.