“Each literature bears its freight of the eclipsed; each generation shows us writers in the process of disappearing.”

“I look upon a year lived as a year earned; and each year earned means a greater treasury of experience and power laid up against time of need.”

“Life is literally a process of one creature eating another, whether it’s bacteria breaking down plants or animals, plants strangling each other, animals going for the throat, or viruses attacking animals. “All of nature is a conjugation of the verb ‘to eat,’” in the words of William Ralph Inge.”

“The flickering candlelight conspired with the silence, and we only interrupted each other’s reading to share a casual delight.”

“Honestly,” he says, “I judge writers on how they write queries. If you’re a good writer, you’re a good writer.” And if not, then not.”

“One changes, as a writer, fairly quickly; what you wrote six months or a year ago might not sound right anymore.”

“We need to develop within our children and young people the capacity to respect the cultures and beliefs of the different groups that make up our society; and we need to develop the resolve to treat each other justly. Secondly, we must eliminate, so far as any society can, the under-achievement of many of our children and young people from all sections of the community. We need to raise the performance of all pupils and to tackle the obstacles to higher achievement which are common to all. But we also need to tackle those special factors which additionally may contribute to the under-achievement of many members of our ethnic minorities.”