And the ape and the man exist in one body; and when the ape’s desires are about to be fulfilled, he disappears and is succeeded by the man, who is disgusted with the ape’s appetite.

A tired man is already in the grip of death and insanity... A sane man is a man who is fully awake. As he grows tired, he loses his ability to rise above dreams and delusions, and life becomes steadily more chaotic.

What if the ‘brutal thunderclap of halt’ takes the form of the choice, Dishonesty or insanity?

The Americans have always been more open to my ideas. In fact, I could earn a living in America just by lecturing. One of my brightest audiences, incidentally, were the prisoners in a Philadelphia gaol – brighter than my students at university.

The “passion for incredulity” can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that “the world” would decline to recognize them.

Being very famous is not the fun it sounds. It merely means you’re being chased by a lot of people and you lose your privacy.

If I’d stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer.

Too much success gets you resting on your laurels and creates a kind of quicksand that you can’t get out of.

It is far easier to write an angry letter than to go and say angry things to another person – because as soon as we look in one another’s faces we can see the other point of view.