I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

You are...beyond my imagination. It's a wonder you can be touched at all.

I want a faith that's so alive, it can be seen. I want a hope that cannot hide, even when I'm weak.

Age and illness made one a dualist

When we do evil We and our victims Are equally bewildered.

Golf is like eating peanuts. You can play too much or play too little.

Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety.

I really prize and love great painting. It's so out of date now. It's slightly come back in.

Tolerance obviously does not disturb the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil.

I do have one slightly crooked wheel upstairs, but everything else is ticking along just four-o, thank you very much.