Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin.

I've never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin. The masters had no idea what was expected of y….

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off..

There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I'm conscious that my scripts often read better than they play..

... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate….

I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control..

All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on..

I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain..

I can walk. It's just that I'm so rich I don't need to..

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remem….

To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy..

Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one ….

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there..

Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds..

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere..

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading the….

I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment..

At eighty things do not occur; they recur..

Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity..

Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages - just don't catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, the….

Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall..