An orotundity, which I define as Nobelitis a pomposity in which one is treated as representative of more than oneself by someone conscious of representing more than himself.
The Navy’s a very gentlemanly business. You fire at the horizon to sink a ship and then you pull people out of the water and say, ‘Frightfully sorry, old chap.’
I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel.
It wasn’t until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you’ve got to write your own books and nobody else’s, and then everything followed from there.
