"You can't go through life sitting on the fence. You've got to make decisions, and sometimes you're pretty… — Nevil Shute

"If you're going to make your life in a new country you should go before you're twenty-five. After that you start to get associations, little grooves and anchors, that make it difficult to change."

Success did not thrill him in the least. He regarded a success merely as a convenient platform from which to plan a further advance.

All good designers are difficult men or they could not be good designers; I think everybody at the table was more or less aware of that. We set ourselves to mollify the great man, and I say that with sincerity. A great man he was, a great designer, and a superlative engineer. But not an easy man to deal with. No.