For Me This Is The Vital Litmus

The Writer Learns To Write, In The Last Resort, Only By Writing. He Must Get Words Onto Paper Even If He Is Dissatisfied With Them. A Young Writer Must Cross Many Psychological Barriers To Acquire Confidence In His Capacity To Produce Good Work-especially His First Full-length Book-and He Cannot Do This By Staring At A Piece Of Blank Paper, Searching For The Perfect Sentence.

Wisdom Lies Not In Possessing Knowledge - Which Quickly Becomes Outdated - But In Perpetually Seeking It.

Hell Is Being Trapped In A Night-club With The'beautiful People'and Forced To Live In A'luxury Penthouse Flat'.

I Don't Write Huge Books Any More. I Used To Write 1,000 Printed Pages, But Now I Write Short Books. I Did One On Napoleon, 50,000 Words - Enjoyed Doing That. He Was A Baddie. I Did One On Churchill, Which Was A Bestseller In New York, I'm Glad To Say. 50,000 Words. He Was A Goodie.

The Study Of History Is A Powerful Antidote To Contemporary Arrogance. It Is Humbling To Discover How Many Of Our Glib Assumptions, Which Seem To Us Novel And Plausible, Have Been Tested Before, Not Once But Many Times And In Innumerable Guises; And Discovered To Be, At Great Human Cost, Wholly False.