By the by, if the English race had done nothing else, yet if they left the world the notion of a gentleman, they would have done a great service to mankind.

I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman's mind to be more like my own than any other man's living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession.

Beauty is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison.

The poetical language of an age should be the current language heightened.

You travel the world and you talk to people about Jos Buttler, and they rave about this lad. I don't like massive comments, but he'd have to be up there with the three or four greatest white-ball players of all time. You're talking Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, MS Dhoni, Viv Richards.

You develop a sympathy for all human beings when you travel a lot.

I'm a big fan of doing 'Triple D.' But I don't want to do it forever, don't get me wrong! Travel away from my family, are you crazy? But do you know what it does for these mom-and-pop restaurant joints? It changes their lives forever. I mean, their businesses will never be the same.

I think that most of the children's writers live in the world that they've created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children's writers are the children.