“Are you going to give a speech?' she asked gaily.He gave a choked laugh. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Not for ages.''My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!' ...'In the Lords, I remember. It ...”

“If theres a single idea I emphasize when people ask about writing, its that theres no right way to produce a book. But I do think that whatever you do, you should do regularly, whether its waking u...”

“Of course, thats one of the dreams of modernist literature, whether realist or fantastic: that the more stories we tell each other about such tragedies, the fewer of them there will be. Were still ...”

“There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art.The trick is to keep a secret. Or many secrets, even. In Lee Childs books, Jack Reacher ...”

“The Thames was beautiful, dark, and swift beneath the billion yellow and white lights of the city”

“He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.”

“A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.”

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”

“[N]one of us drinks the chalice of our existence to the last drop. None of us is fully obedient. Each of us falls short of the human nature entrusted to us.”