Writer Quotes

Blind and unwavering undisciplined at all times constitutes the real strength of all free men.

Applause that comes thundering with such force you might think the audience merely suffers the music as an excuse for its ovations.

We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings.

The mysterious is always attractive. People will always follow a vail.

The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough.

Think of all the really successful men and women you know. Do you know a single one who didn't learn very young the trick of calling attention to himself in the right quarters?

The impossible talked of is less impossible from the moment words are laid to it.

Language is memory and metaphor.

Hope is a talent like any other.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.

For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received.

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realizes itself.

What we earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are.

We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.

The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.

Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords - philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather.

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man, youth never.

All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the safe and just side of a question is the generous and merciful side.

Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth.

A man may be as much a fool from the want of sensibility as the want of sense.

In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

There's a really classic cliche every time you switch the TV on - you see cops arguing. I have spent a day a week for many years in the presence of police and I have never seen them argue. It's a military hierarchy. They do what they're told. There's no bickering.

There are people who can achieve huge success in life, while adding a bit of fun and a splash of colour to this increasingly grey world.

The police feel that most of the public are against them and that there is a lot of bad feeling.

My day starts with Radio 4's Today live or 'listen again' wherever I am in the world, thanks to digital radio - I even have an app on my iPhone that receives it.

Music is an important part of my writing process.

I travel abroad constantly on book promotion and research, and the Internet is invaluable to me for accessing U.K. news in places such as America, which most of the time hasn't heard of England.

I think the police are a major part of the glue that holds civilised life together. They're not highly paid.

I get asked to read new works a lot, in the hope that I will give a quotation and I will only give a 'puff' for a book I truly love.