The war had made a man of him! It had coarsened him and hardened him. There was no other way to look at it. It had made him reach a point at which he would no longer stand unbearable things.

Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden.

And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me.

The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of the fact he is reading a book.

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.

If you're going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he'd better be real enough that you can smell his breath.

What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself.

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.

Pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. But if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go.

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

I've always loved the '40s romantic comedies and the idea of those mistaken identities and lovers' misunderstandings.

Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.

... the mere thought of going near a man who is not mellowly pickled, and whose breath reeks of his native fleshy self, is squeamishly unpalatable to me.

Someone ought to write a novel about me.

I don't know why British actors are getting big parts in American TV shows. Maybe it's because we're cheap.

I didn't have all the expectations and the publicity. It probably made me work harder and learn more. It was a blessing in disguise.

We need to unleash the military in unison with our partners in Europe and the Middle East to be effective.

Life is full of a thousand red herrings, and it takes the history of a civilisation to work out which are the red herrings and which aren't.

I feel like I am very drawn to the short form stuff because it's just fun to be making something, and then, a week later, it's out. I will always be drawn to that kind of thing.

When I die and I'm lucky enough or fortunate enough and brave enough throughout my life to get into Heaven and I see Octavia Spencer sitting there then all is good.