“I think it’s possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.”

Those books of mine that are remunerative – I’m not talking about poetry here – take years to write, and I am never sure they’ll be successful. So writing is a risk in more senses than one.

Fiction basically is a form of gossip where you want to enter other people’s lives, the lives of people you don’t know, and you want to know what’s going to happen to them.

You will get what you want but you must want it and not just wish it.

I want my books to sell, to be read. I’m not interested in being obscure.

God save us from people who mean well.

My eyes close. I am here and not here. A waking nap? A flight to the end of the galaxy and perhaps a couple of billion light-years beyond?

I am certainly not allergic to causes – particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.

Dear though the reader might be, I’d be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.

Don’t put things off till it’s too late. You are the DJ of your fate.

Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.

In a painting, you can’t make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist’s stroke.

For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.

I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.

I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.

You can talk good ideas out of existence.

God save us from people who mean well.

Always do business as if the person you’re doing business with is trying to screw you, because he probably is. And if he’s not, you can be pleasantly surprised.

The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?

It has always been my rule in business to make everything count.

Be patient with me, dear heart. The art of loving is a peculiar business when one has spent an eternity hating themselves.

All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don’t catch horses going around looking like people, do you?

Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business.

I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.