Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.

Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against this as a method, but it is not what English writers do.

However you disguise novels, they are always biographies.

This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.

In India the odd thing is that English is this almost artificial language floating on the surface of a place with about fifty other languages. The same is true of Nigeria but even more so.

I play the piano passionately and inaccurately. Indeed, I worked out the other day that of my seventy-five years; I have spent at least one year sitting on a piano stool.