Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.

Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.

I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes.

Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.

Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.

A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow.

When I was young there was no respect for the young, and now that I am old there is no respect for the old. I missed out coming and going.

Western man is schizophrenic.

There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going.

If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.

The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.

In plain words: now that Britain has told the world that she has the H-Bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare.

I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.

There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

We pay when old for the excesses of youth.

I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.

To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.

Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.

If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.

Living in an age of advertisement we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day but it changes and withers at a touch.

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.

Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.

It's essential not to have an ideology, not to be a member of a political party. While the writer can have certain political views, he has to be careful not to have his hands tied.

I was never really a writer, I was always more of a performer.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, a place to love and be irritated with.