authenticity Quotes

If you want a good life, don't succeed at anything too early or too well. And don't choose a profession that attracts money or attention. The minute people want to see you doing what you do, you're finished.

With 'J', at a deep base level, there is still some comedy, but that masculinist voice that had driven so many of my novels I suddenly did not want to occupy. I wasn't reneging on it; I just didn't want to do it.

Sometimes I felt like my columns were like little novels in themselves. But I wasn't writing what I believed. I'm not interested in what I believe.

Non-conformity has always been one of the great British virtues, and that includes non-conformity to things British.

There's no law that says you have to be consistent in your preferences.

I think one of the main reasons I write is to do better than ranting. The ranting is the opinion, and the writing is not the opinion. I always say that people's opinions are the worst things about them. The words demand a dignity.

When emotion rules, every fool thinks that he is holy.

There's a problem with narratives. Most that spring to mind are fictional.

The novels I planned to write were never going to be funny books about Jews. They were going to be country house books. Only later on could I write what I knew I was best at writing about.

As a young man, I wooed, unsuccessfully, with Puccini. It's important to get your operas right.