We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

I left school at 16 but I wish I'd gone to university - I think I would have studied English literature. I had a knack for that. But I don't think you have the kind of wisdom at 16 to make that decision.

It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.

I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war.

Apart from a few simple principles the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears.

Until the June 1967 war I was completely caught up in the life of a young professor of English. Beginning in 1968 I started to think write and travel as someone who felt himself to be directly involved in the renaissance of Palestinian life and politics.

An English man does not travel to see English men.

Viewed freely the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect race and range of time and is both the free and compacted composition of all.

The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English because then I could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it.

When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer.