What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is r….

The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown..

Only those with great ambitions know what great fears drive them forward..

If I did only one thing at a time I'd think I was wasting my time. If, for example, I only wrote novels I would feel like a charlatan and a fraud..

There is no humiliation worse than the consciousness of a wasted life. It stains the spirit, forestalls hope, and destroys any motive for action or c….

London goes beyond any boundary or convention.It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble sta….

The ordinary routines of life are never chronicled by the historian, but they make up almost the whole of experience..

My great fear has always been complete and utter failure. Hence, you see, all the dispossessed people in my fiction, and why I try to earn as much mo….

I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us..

Familial love can find an echo in our own hearts just as it did in that of Charles Dickens..

I love soap operas - the stories, the plots! And I love the game shows and the courtroom dramas and the detectives - Jessica Fletcher, 'Columbo,' 'Pe….

The English have always been greedy for news of times past, with that mixture of fatalism and melancholy which is part of the national character..

I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time,….

People are much more interesting than people realise..

There are two types of people, you see. One type keep their heads straight, and look around as they walk. The others look up - at the tops of houses,….

I don't find myself interesting as a person and the details I find boring, quite frankly. You could sum it up in a few words or sentences really: cam….

And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get inside a book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wanted to be a pa….

I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about..

I never read in bed, only in my study..

So do we discover, in the world, that our worst fears are unfulfilled; yet we must fear, in order that we may feel delight..

In London, I've always lived within 10 miles of where I was born. You see, there is something called a spirit of place, and my place happens to be Lo….