If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them. Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels (1946)
The thing that politicians are seemingly unable to understand is that you cannot produce a vigorous literature by terrorising everyone into conformity.
I am a writer. The impulse of every writer is to "keep out of politics". What he wants is to be left alone so that he can go on writing books in peace. Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party (1938)
If Dickens were alive to-day he would make a trip to Soviet Russia and come back with a book rather like Gide's Retour de L'URSS. Charles Dickens (1939)
I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.