Peter Taylor

You can tell a man is clever by his answers – you can tell a man is wise by his questions.

Forgetting the injustices and seeming injustices which one suffered from one’s parents during childhood and youth must be the major part of any maturing process. I kept repeating this to myself, as though it were a lesson I would at some future time be accountable for. A certain oblivion was what we must undergo in order to become adults and live peacefully with ourselves.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

If you fail to plan you are planning to fail.

I’ve always had a dislike of any form of didacticism, especially when it becomes the dominant element in writing. Character and emotional content should always be the strong elements. I think that was maybe what went wrong with my early novel, that I wanted it to be too profound, I was trying to put too much into it. I learned fairly early that one can handle only so much idea in a story. Well, or rather, I can!

One makes advances. You do! You come to see what your story is like. That’s part of the fun: to see how you can get the other elements that are not your natural interests or concerns primarily.