Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.

You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.

Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?

But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.

When you take a child who's hollering like hell, sit him on your knee, and say "once upon a time", you stop him hollering. As long as you go on telling him a story, he will listen. Novelists who neglect this fundamental effect do so at their peril. They become what is known as the experimental novelist, and an experimental novel is not really a novel at all.

Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!

Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.