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In a day when, if you insulted a man it might cost you your life, you were probably more civil.
A freewheeling mind can conceive a virtually infinite number of sequences, but just how that mind picks out and stores those that may perhaps be used... →
Likings arise when one has no earthly reason for liking - the most wildly improbable marriages and uncommon friendship.
I have never written for an audience. On the other hand I do not write merely to please myself.
On a ship, everything is enclosed: the people are right on top of each other and can't get up and walk away.
The function of the novel is the exploration of the human condition. Really, that's what it's all about.
You can't be happy if you're not tolerably happy with yourself. The addition of friends adds immeasurably to life.
My wife and I have spent most of our lives in France, and we are both pretty well bilingual, my wife more purely than I, since as a little girl she... →
Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles... →
Take a newspaper account of Waterloo or Trafalgar, with all the small advertisements: it seems much more real than reading about it in a history book.
The first interviews I gave were entirely unpleasant. You have people trying to trip you up with impolite questions that have nothing to do with the... →
When you're taking a fence on a horse, you don't think much; your body does all the thinking, and you're over or you're not over.... →
About my books, that's all that I think the public has, in its normal way, to know. My private life is, by definition, private.
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