There seemed to be no one in a position of power, from the Vatican to Wall Street, from Parliament to Scotland Yard to Fleet Street, who could think of anything better to do than abuse it....
The measure of a work of art is how much art it has in it, not how much ‘relevance’. Relevant to whom? Relevant to what? Nothing is more ephemeral than a hot topic.
In England, art was much less likely to be mentioned in polite society than sexual perversions or methods of torture.
Personally I think that competition should be encouraged in war and sport and business, but that it makes no sense in the arts. If an artist is good, nobody else can do what he or she does and therefore all comparisons are incoherent.
If anything should take place behind closed doors, it was cruelty and betrayal.
Waiting for a book to be published is like having a baby. It would be nine months before we heard the patter of tiny pages trotting through the letter box, and the bookcase shuffled it's shelves in boredom and I was a martyr to morning sickness.
That was the wonderful thing about historical novels, one met so many famous people. It was like reading a very old copy of magazine.
An image flashed across her mind of two rams flinging their heads against each other on a rocky mountainside. What did the girl rams do? Faint with pleasure? Clap their cloven hooves? Lean against some nearby boulders, with little tubs of mountain gr...
An editor sleeping with his writer was not as bad as a psychoanalyst sleeping with his patient, or even a professor sleeping with an undergraduate, let alone a president with an intern.
