Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

It's best to give while your hand is still warm.

Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.

Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive.

You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.

The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.

There's something every woman wants, and that's a man to blame.

When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.

Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

It sometimes happens that the town child is more alive to the fresh beauty of the country than a child who is country born

I fear that we shall be obliged to leave this pudding

Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some chamomile tea: "One table-spoonful to be taken at bedtime.