What A Child Doesn't Receive He Can

He Didn't Want Her; He Wanted Me. Well, You Know How It Is." Dalgliesh Did Know. This, After All, Was The Commonest, The Most Banal Of Personal Tragedies. You Loved Someone. They Didn't Love You. Worse Still, In Defiance Of Their Own Best Interests And To The Destruction Of Your Peace, They Loved Another. What Would Half The World's Poets And Novelists Do Without This Universal Tragicomedy?

To Look Back On One's Life Is To Experience The Capriciousness Of Memory. ... The Past Is Not Static. It Can Be Relived Only In Memory, And Memory Is A Device For Forgetting As Well As Remembering. It, Too, Is Not Immutable. It Rediscovers, Reinvents, Reorganizes. Like A Passage Of Prose It Can Be Revised And Repunctuated. To That Extent, Every Autobiography Is A Work Of Fiction And Every Work Of Fiction An Autobiography.

Increase Your Word Power. Words Are The Raw Material Of Our Craft. The Greater Your Vocabulary The More ­effective Your Writing. We Who Write In English Are Fortunate To Have The Richest And Most Versatile Language In The World. Respect It.

I Believe That Political Correctness Can Be A Form Of Linguistic Fascism, And It Sends Shivers Down The Spine Of My Generation Who Went To War Against Fascism.

If Our Sex Life Were Determined By Our First Youthful Experiments, Most Of The World Would Be Doomed To Celibacy. In No Area Of Human Experience Are Human Beings More Convinced That Something Better Can Be Had Only If They Persevere.