Author

All novelists write in a different way, but I always write in longhand and then do two versions of typescript on a computer.

All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.

I am, incidentally, the only writer to have received the Somerset Maugham award twice - the first time for my first novel, the second time for my second first novel.

In America, the policeman is a working-class hero. In England, the policeman is a working-class traitor.

Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block.

Every 10 years you're a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They're full of new rewards.

Watching an adaptation of your novel can be a violent experience: seeing your old jokes suddenly thrust at you can be alarming. But I started to enjoy 'Money' very quickly, and then I relaxed.

Very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external.

Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.

Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without the thorn.

Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

Mungkin kekejaman manusia sudah pasti dan abadi. Hanya gaya yang berubah.

Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.

My literary career kicked off in 1956 when, as a resident of Swansea, South Wales, I published my first novel, 'Lucky Jim.'

All novelists write in a different way, but I always write in longhand and then do two versions of typescript on a computer.

When we read, we are doing more than delectating words on a page stories, characters, images, notions. We are communing with the mind of the author.

Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.

If God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.