Literature is analysis after the event.

When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers.

What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

My father was in the First World War.

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.