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

I have a desk that I can raise or lower according to the state of my aching back. Sometimes I stand at it, and sometimes I have it high up to write at and sometimes a bit lower to type.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 tried writing out a plot with the second or third novel I wrote, and it was so boring, so desperately boring.

My parents tolerated me reading comics because they knew I was also reading 'proper' books, too.