“Graham Greene at 82 years old was still writing, and I don’t think anyone can deny the force, the expertise, and the unique quality of his writing, if you take his complete oeuvre.”

the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.

One’s intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.

I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.

Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?

Even if you got rid of paper, you would still have story-tellers. In fact, you had the story-tellers before you had the paper.

We just got to go on, that’s all. That’s what grownups would do.

We’re not savages. We’re English.

Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an autobiography. That’s what you could say about it.

How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?

At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

I am here; and here is nowhere in particular.

The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers….Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.

What a man does defiles him, not what is done by others.

Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

Heaven lies around us in our infancy.

There’s a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.

I can never be anonymous – especially when I walk round looking like this; especially when I take so much trouble not to be anonymous, right?

I don’t want to advise anyone to do anything, apart from try and stay alive. That’s my advice – don’t die.

Modi government has not flouted any rule or regulation to help anyone.

Same with anyone who’s been flying for years and loves it still… we’re part of a world we deeply love.

My goal is to make everyone and anyone a Kevin Hart fan.

I have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it.

Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.