When anybody tells you something about writing, somebody will tell you something completely different and they will also be right

History is too often the refuge of the tidy-minded, making neat patterns when the dust has settled.

There's nothing the British like better than a bloke who comes from nowhere, makes it, and then gets clobbered.

To hear the Treorchy Male Choir in full throat is one of the great joys of choral music.

Writing novels is a way of living alternative lives.

Occasionally now I feel a wang that goes in my head - once you've got it you've got it. The [illness] was quite severe, leaving me deeply unhappy and frightened.

More people now work in the arts than the steel, coal and car industries combined.

Is it rather stupid and dangerous to take Magna Carta so much for granted, as many of us seem to do, and to think of this attitude as 'very English?'

I'm not a fan of the working class being mocked, including by some of our famous writers - even those who came from it.

The arts stimulate imagination. They provoke thought. And then, having done that, all sorts of other things happen.

Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly.

Forgiveness brings healing.

It is impossible to make your own luck without the ingredient of hard work.

Darkness had been essentially banished from the Earth. It had become a choice.

To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and furthermore it is to act as if He did exist.

I feel I let my team down today. My heart is bleeding for everybody else. I felt like I should have gotten it done today. That's how it is. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.

Bigotry and judgment are the height of insecurity.

Friends should be very delicate and careful in administering pity as medicine, when enemies use the same article as poison.

God condemned sin in Christ, so that holiness might appear in us.

If we are negative by nature, we Americans are more human than most. The Founding Fathers loved going negative. Heck, the Declaration of Independence is one long negative ad.

Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic.