If the world is to be improved it must be by the exercise of individual charity. - Anthony Burgess

…Novello should be extremely grateful that his innubile daughter was being taken off his hands by a Tasca.

We can no longer expect the one big book, the single achievement, to be an author's claim to posterity's regard. We shall be more inclined to assess the stature of a novelist by his ability to create what the French call an oeuvre, to present fragments of an individual vision in book after book, to build, if not a War and Peace or Ulysses, at least a shelf.

Maugham was a mere visitor and did not have to take any language examinations; a civil servant like myself was forced to reach degree level in Malay....