“I hope my books make statements about our general condition.”

The mask was a thing on it’s own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.

Which is better — to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is? Which is better — to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill? Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That’s so many pages longhand.

If faces were different when lit from above or below — what was a face? What was anything?

Beethoven for listening; Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven for playing as well as Bach and Prokofiev and so on. If I kept going, this list would spiral. It’s as wide as literature; in fact, it is probably wider.

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.

If I blow the conch and they don’t come back; then we’ve had it. We shan’t keep the fire going. We’ll be like animals. We’ll never be rescued.” “If you don’t blow, we’ll soon be animals anyway.

If faces were different when lit from above or below — what was a face? What was anything?

You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

We’re all mad, the whole damned race. We’re wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we’re all mad and in solitary confinement.

Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?

We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.

I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there.

The rules!” shouted Ralph, “you’re breaking the rules!” “Who cares?

No human endeavour can ever be wholly good… it must always have a cost.

I do this work for the common people and part of that work is creating a general awareness of such problems as they exist because my work is beyond class, religion and creed.

it is certain that the incidence of chronic and diversified illnesses will abate, and the general health of all mankind will be much improved.

Those most moved to tears by every word of a preacher are generally weak and a rascal when the feelings evaporate.

I’m still very grateful to digital cameras in general, but I didn’t have this feeling with the RED one.

Consciousness is a state in which a man knows all at once everything that he in general knows and in which he can see how little he does know and how many contradictions there are in what he knows.

I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.

I don’t have very complete scripts for my films. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character who’s in my mind in reality.

Any general statement is like a check drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.