“I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.”

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection, fears, doubts, all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.

Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.

To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.

I don’t like work but I like what is in work – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – which no other man can ever know.

I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.

The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.

Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

We live as we dream – alone.

A task, any task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance.

Perhaps life is just that- a dream and a fear.

It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.

Going home must be like going to render an account.

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.

A harsh reality of newspaper editing is that the deadlines don’t allow for the polish that you expect in books or even magazines

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

I loved the photographs of people wearing elaborate makeup and costumes – they really pulled at me inside. I was in that library every week for years, until I was about 13. I had a rich interior life, because I didn’t have much of a social life.

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.

I read my books aloud before they were published.

I owe it all to art books, chocolate and young men.

Conflict resolution,’ said Nightingale. ‘Is this what they teach at Hendon these days?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘But don’t worry, they also teach us how to beat people with phone books and the ten best ways to plant evidence.

When I open many books, or most leading women’s magazines, or see almost all TV shows, I don’t find myself at all. I am completely anonymous. My value system is not there.