I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

Whenever I start a book, I swear it's going to be a short one. But then it's, 'Who was his grandfather? And how did he get there in the first place? And what kind of animals is he chasing?'

Rampaging horsemen can conquer; only the city can civilize.

I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.

If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.