There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

More from Quoted by Granville Hicks in The Living Novel: A Symposium (1957)

• Conquered people tend to be witty.
• Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
• With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.