Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one’s dignity, which can be an insuperable barrier against advancement in almost any direction. However, in those days, choice...

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

An exceedingly well-informed report,’ said the General. ‘You have given yourself the trouble to go into matters thoroughly, I see. That is one of the secrets of success in life.

For some reason, the sight of snow descending on fire always makes me think of the ancient world – legionaries in sheepskin warming themselves at a brazier: mountain altars where offerings glow between wintry pillars;...

It was [Hugh’s] omnipresent fear that some woman might be foisted on him who would turn out to be an adventuress and would blackmail him. This preoccupation made it almost impossible for him to engage...

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those...

Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of...

…at the termination of a given passage of time…the hidden gate goes down…and all scoring is doubled. This is perhaps an image of how we live. For reasons not always at the time explicable, there...

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.

Well,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, speaking kindly, as if to a child who has proposed a game inevitably associated with the breakage of china, ‘I know trouble will come of it if we do.

I get a warm feeling among my books.