It's miraculous how much easier the computer has made my sort of work.

As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it.

We're taking part in a divine comedy and we should realise that the play is always a comedy, in that we're all ultimately ridiculous.

If you can't get a job as a pianist in a brothel, you become a royal reporter.

People who get on at school are the ones who play by the rules, and no one's going to get far in later life playing by the system.

The only redemptive feature of war is the brotherhood which it forges.

A Tory government with a decent mandate seems the only hope of tackling the fiscal catastrophe responsibly.

You cannot write down how people are good; you just know it, and cannot get away from it.

Lots of us when we're children believe 'oh well, if the world knew us as we really are, they'd know what wonderful, clever, brilliant, charming people we really are.'

I would have been a disastrous soldier.

When I am fishing, I think quite a lot about the fish, but I also think about the book I'm writing.

A truly successful person is not one who achieves his highest ambitions, but one who enjoys helping others reach theirs.

Explanation is where the mind rests.

Beulah has a husband?' I know. It's a miracle. There can't be more than two people on the planet who'd be willing to sleep with her, and here we are both in the same town.

Too many marketers assume that future will hold back and wait until they're ready for it. It won't.

Human life, old and young, takes place between hope and remembrance. The young man sees all the gates to his desires open, and the old man remembers--his hopes.

The artist himself is often surprised at the finished work of art. He cannot tell 'how it happened', nor could he repeat the feat at someone's bidding.

One's capacity for metaphor is one's capacity for a full life.

Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too!

If what you want to do is make good art, decide whats good and try to imitate it.

You have to set goals that are almost out of reach. If you set a goal that is attainable without much work or thought, you are stuck with something below your true talent and potential.