It is a rule of creative ability that it does nothing of any value, while it is possessed by this afflatus of vanity.

No rich man is a patriot, no rich man is a friend. They have all only got one fatherland the Ritz-Carlton; and one friend the mistress they're promising to divorce their wives for.

If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go around.

A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.

The waste, the insane freaks of these money men, the cynicism and egotism of their life... I'll show that they are not brilliant, not romantic, not delightful, not intelligent.

Venus can see at night without eyes.

Creation of something out of nothing is the most primitive of human passions and the most optimistic

When people are collecting gold they aren't doing business. ... Gold is constipation: even bankruptcy is more fluid. Gold isn't wealth: positions in markets are wealth.

About myself - no. I'm unimportant, an observer, a wandering animal.

Charm is a cunning self-forgetfulness.

Gentlemen are overestimated, that is my experience.

And if you can find any way out of our culture, then that's a trap too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap.

One should respect public opinion in so far as it is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

Yesterday, I did some painting then went out to buy an onion and came home and watched 'University Challenge.' The onion was probably the highlight.

My success has been as full of luck as a crapshooter's dream.

There were moments when she wasn't talking so much as fading into time, dropping back into some funnelled stretch of recent past.

Once your writing is out there, you can't control how other people perceive it. All you can do is stand in your truth.

There's truth even in tainted knowledge, if one reads carefully.

Starvation, not sin, is the parent of modern crime.

I realised I'd never climb Everest but thought I could still write a book

Smoking cigarettes and writing something nasty on the wall, teacher sends you to the Principal's office down the hall.