“Whenever I’m with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.”

All of it! – was held together by invisible chemical bonds, and I found a strange, inexplicable comfort in knowing that somewhere, even though we couldn’t see it in our own world, there was a real stability.

One that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.

Not very good with death? Father was a military man, and military men lived with death; lived for death; lived on death. To a professional soldier, oddly enough, death was life.

I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel.

I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother’s house was filled with English books.

Whenever I’m out-of-doors and find myself wanting to have a first-rate think.

During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people’s creations.

Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one’s self is like the heat in an oven.

The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned.

If poisons were ponies, I’d put my money on cyanide.

Children have much more finely tuned senses of justice, morals, and ethics. They are much more Platonic: children are symmetrical, before we begin to fragment them with our own nonsensical ideas and squelch their natural joy in knowledge.

I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.

I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.

Except I’m aware that as a writer you can’t get away with as much writing for children as you can with adults.

There’s a lot there to enlarge you. That’s part of the value of being in an extended family is that it enlarges you. It makes you bigger. It makes you more.

The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one’s opinion but rather to know it.

For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.

I’ve been through all the bad parts of the streets.

Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

I’d rather do a really good small part than a really bad big part.

Or people say, ‘Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.’ The work is to make it look effortless. That’s the hard part.