Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves.
Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.
Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.
We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.
A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.
If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk.
The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.
Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity.
It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it.
First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.
Metaphysical speculation is about as pointless as a discussion on the meaning of one's lungs. They're for breathing.
Death ... obliterates family resemblance as it does personality: there is no affinity between the living and the dead.
Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.
you'd like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That must be the most futile oath anyone ever swears.
We live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving.
the most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves.
gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.
Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports.
People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?
The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.
Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.
I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn't see the skull beneath the skin.
Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?
Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most want to hear?
Crime fiction confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible, and moral universe.
A politician is required to listen to humbug, talk humbug, condone humbug. The most we can hope for is that we don't actually believe it.
History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.
I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.
The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why we dread it, is that it leaves us with no defence, not even against those who love us.
We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.
I still occasionally need to struggle but I now fear it less. The weapons I fight it with are also my consolations: books, music, food, wine, nature.
But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.
If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him, don't you think?
Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.
[My father and his friends] believed in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made that equality possible.
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.
If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome?
Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.
Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people’s money, other people’s safety, other people’s future.
Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.
A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which it affirms the sanity of human life and exorcises irrational guilts.
Any visitor to an historic country town or city quickly becomes aware in his or her peregrinations that the most attractive houses in the centre are invariably the offices of lawyers.
It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity.
I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery.
In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life.
I find it extraordinary that a straightforward if inelegant device for ensuring the survival of the species should involve human beings in such emotional turmoil. Does sex have to be taken so seriously?
I thought of inviting you to my other club but you know how it is. Lunching there is a useful way of reminding people that you're still alive, but the members will come up and congratulate you on the fact.