He [Bloch] was one of those touchy, highly-strung people who cannot bear to have made a blunder, will not admit it to themselves, and whose whole day is ruined by it.

Only imagination and belief can differentiate from the rest certain objects, certain people, and can create an atmosphere.

...we need to bear in mind that our opinion of other people, our ties with friends or family, have only the semblance of fixity and are, in fact, as eternally fluid as the sea.

She was not yet dead. But I was already alone.

There is nothing like desire for obstructing any resemblance between what one says and what one has on one's mind.

Quite half of the human race was in tears.

We forgive the crimes of individuals, but not their participation in a collective crime.

Dinner-parties bore us because our imagination is absent, and reading interests us because it is keeping us company.

Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one's life to women than to postage stamps, old snuff-boxes, or even to paintings and statues.

In business presentations, positive impressions can help make a sale or win over an audience.

I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.

It's really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.

There's always time for one more pint. - Chief Inspector Morse

I've been proud to be national champion.

Everything changes but change itself. Everything flows and nothing remains the same... You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go flowing ever on.

Real life is messy, and drama is a shaped version of real life.

The prospect of the UK without a BBC funded by the licence fee is anywhere between improbable and impossible.

They say the day you lose your parents, you start to look like them.

however many resolutions one makes, one's pen, like water, always finds its own level, and one can't write in any way other than one's own.