“It was clearly a lot more difficult in the field than in the office, where you could keep your distance and maintain a calculated composure. Being faced with real people was a far tougher call on o...”

“You couldnt predict what was going to happen for one simple reason: people.”

“Kindness was too painful. It had been a long time since he had had to endure it.”

“Only a man with nothing to hide could make that kind of racket.”

“He often came back all thinky from work.”

“Mirabelle always ate her lunch on Brighton beach if the weather was in any way passable, but out of sheer principle she never paid tuppence for a chair. We did not win the war to have to pay to sit...”

“Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don't forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.”

“When we stop noticing small things, we are no longer truly alive.”

“There is a part of everything which is unexplored,because we are accustomed to using our eyes only in association with the memory of what people before us have thought of the thing we are looking a...”

“I am quite sure I am more afraid of people who are themselves terrified of the devil than I am of the devil himself.”

“If the devil is sending you thoughts of fear, resist him, stop the thoughts”

“Perhaps living in fear can drive all devils out of a person.”

“He who wishes to gain understanding, must first depart from devilish ways.”