Love may not make the world go round, but I must admit that it makes the ride worthwhile.

I am not an Englishman, I was never an Englishman, and I don't ever want to be one. I am a Scotsman! I was a Scotsman and I will always be one.

I don't understand if you get caught in a fight, but take it out on a room, how that implies some psychiatric disorder.

Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith. For without fear of the devil there is no need for God.

A martini. Shaken, not stirred.

The key to a woman's heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time.

If you have to resort to violence, you've already lost.

If you fear nothing, you love nothing. If you love nothing, what joy can there be in life?

I like women. I don't understand them, but I like them.

If you can't do it with one bullet, don't do it at all.

You write your first draft with your heart and you re-write with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think.

He'd once explained that when he was a boy his very proper parents had forbidden him and his brothers to curse in the house so 'feather buckets' was the young boys coded way of saying 'f*ck it

In general men keep their internal lives–and their more complex emotions–closely guarded, because either they don't understand them or they are afraid of being betrayed by them.

A mind is so closely shaped by the body and destined to serve it that only one mind could possibly arise in it. No body, never mind.

But leave me to my beer! Gold is dross, love is loss, so if I gulp my sorrows down, or see them drown in foamy draughts of old nut-brown, then I do wear the crown, without the cross!

We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted.

Promise to wear a cheerful appearance at all times and give every person you meet a smile.

The most purely autobiographical ­fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more auto­biographical story than "The Meta­morphosis".

Careful grooming may take twenty years off a woman's age, but you can't fool a flight of stairs.

Finally, strategy must have continuity. It can't be constantly reinvented.