What thumbsuckers we all are…when it comes to mothers.

Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so...

Lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different times.

He wants to see, he wants to know, only to see and know. I’m aware that it is this mentality, this curiosity, which is responsible for the hydrogen bomb and the imminent demise of civilization...

We’ll choose knowledge no matter what, we’ll maim ourselves in the process, we’ll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive; love or grief or despair or...

But remember that forgiveness, too, is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

Burst pipes were an English tradition, like so many others.Like, for instance, English men. Charm the knickers off you with their mellow vowels and frivolous verbiage, and then, once they’d got them off, panic and...

Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.

The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can’t be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it’s a freshness, a plumpness of...