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" The arts are beyond price; they're beyond value. They're of incalculable worth in what it means to be a human being. "

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" I love all types of music - jazz, great pop music, world music and folk music - but the music I listen to most is piano music from the 18th, 19th and 20th century. Russian music in particular. "

" You're lacking a human dimension of some sort if you're not interested in the arts. "

" We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever. "

" What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism. "

" The only instrument I play myself is the ukulele. "

" The best sort of activity is one that combines mental effort with sensuous delight. That's why I love drawing. "

" One handy piece of equipment, which I recommend to any writer of fiction, is a set of Myriorama cards. I consult them frequently. "

" Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it. "

" I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief. "

" Trying to understand superstition rationally is like trying to pick up something made of wood by using a magnet. "

" For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence. "

" If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day. "

" That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old. "

" Education and health were always matters of charity. You educated children and you helped the sick because they were good things to do, not because you were going to make money out of them. If you let the money-making principle, the profit-seeking motive, anywhere near education and health, things go bad. "

" I don't like it when I see my books sold cheaply. "

" It should be a firmly established part of the curriculum that children should visit theatres and concert halls. "

" If a nation allows its literary culture to die, it's a sign that it doesn't fundamentally care. "

" Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit. "

" I like every individual editor, designer, marketing and publicity person I deal with, but I don't like what publishers, corporately, are doing to the ecology of the book world. It's damaging, and it should change. "

" Possibly because I earn my living as a writer of fiction and possibly because it's just the sensible thing to do, I like to pay attention to everything I come across, including things that evoke the uncanny or the mysterious. "

" My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing. "

" Authors are not a special case, deserving of more sympathy than many other groups. We are a particular case of a general degradation of the quality of life, and we are not going to stop pointing it out, because we speak for many other groups as well. "

" True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility. "

" I write in pen because it works. A fountain pen is no good for writing in the way I do because I'd have to decide, each time I stopped, how long I was likely to stop for in order to know whether or not to put the cap on. But I never know. So instead, I use a ballpoint - a Montblanc, to be precise - the most comfortably balanced pen I've ever found. "

" For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim. "

" Every government secretary of state or minister should jolly well go to the theatre, go to a concert, go to an art gallery, go to a museum, become somehow interested in these things. If they're not interested, they shouldn't be in government, full stop. "

" What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose. "

" Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature. "

" Theatre is one of those things that children will love if they're helped to get there to see it. No child will find his or her own way to the theatre. "

" And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it's this: where am I telling it from? "