Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers, so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

We fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noises.

Two fears alternate in marriage, of loneliness and of bondage. The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married. For one person who fears being thus tied there are four...

It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say ‘if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,’ we might believe them; but were they to...

Youth is a period of missed opportunities.

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing...

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”[The New Statesman, February 25, 1933]

When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.