How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit. - V. S. Pritchett

It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.

One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.

Prep school, public school, university: these now tedious influences standardize English autobiography, giving the educated Englishman the sad if fascinating appearance of a stuffed bird of sly and beady eye in some old seaside museum. The fixation on school has become a class trait. It manifests itself as a mixture of incurious piety and parlour game.