“Every novelist knows – perhaps everyone knows who has written even a letter, or a page of a diary – that the process of composition involves two separate sensibilities.”

“You may be keeping a diary of your thoughts but know that, in every religion, the God you believe is keeping a diary of your actions.”

“You’ve got some folks out here who know a lot of four letter words. But there are two four-letter words they don’t know. W-O-R-K and S-O-A-P, you don’t know those two letter words I’ll tell you that much.”

“Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness – when a glorious idea comes to mind and, secondly, when a last page has been written and you haven’t had time to know how much better it ought to be.”

“In the Great War ledger, the page on which the Russian losses were written has been torn out. No one knows the figure. Five or eight Million?”

“A picture means I know where I was every minute. That's why I take pictures. It's a visual diary.”

“But it was too early to know: there were always more pages to go, more words to be written, before the story was over.”

“Backbenchers are devalued. Their role is diminished. No-one even knows who they are unless they turn up on the front page of a newspaper because the taxpayer has been footing the bill for their duck house.”

“To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.”

“Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.”