Knowledge was the great thing–not abstract knowledge in which Dr. Forester had been so rich, the theories which lead one enticingly on with their appearance of nobility, of transcendent virtue, but detailed, passionate, trivial human...

For a moment he came near to sharing their incredible belief—it would do no harm to mutter a prayer of thanks to the God of his childhood, the God of the Common and the castle,...

Human communication, it sometimes seems to me, involves an exaggerated amount of time. How briefly and to the point people always seem to speak on the stage or on the screen, while in real life...

My second wife left me because she said I was too ambitious. She didn’t realize that it is only the dying who are free from ambition. And they probably have the ambition to live. Some...

She couldn’t avoid being serious about things she cared for, and happiness made her grave at the thought of all the things which might destroy it.

Hate is an automatic response to fear, for fear humiliates.

A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, andit couldnt concieve what it hasnt experienced

No wine can be regarded as unimportant, my friend, since the marriage at Cana.

I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in…We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.

Why doesn’t hatred kill desire? I would have given anything to sleep. I would have behaved like a schoolboy if I had believed in the possibility of a substitute. But there was a time when...

I refused to believe that love could take any other form than mine: I measured love by the extent of my jealousy, and by that standard of course she could not love me at all.

I don’t care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations…I don’t think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren’t...

You must promise me. You can’t desire the end without desiring the means.’Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.

He’s satisfied with himself. If you have a soul you can’t be satisfied.

The Church is in the world, it is part of the suffering in the world, and though Christ condemned the disciple who struck off the ear of the high priest’s servant, our hearts go out...

I doubt if ever one ceases to love, but one can cease to be in love as easily as one can outgrow an author one admired as a boy.

She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my...

I’m afraid of the dark.’ And his mother: ‘Don’t be silly. You know there’s nothing to be afraid in the dark.’ But he knew hte falsity of the reasoning; he knew how they taught also...

In my school, he thought, they learn bitterness and frustration and how to grow old.

One can’t love humanity. One can only love people.

Oh,’ the priest said, ‘that’s another thing altogether – God is love. I don’t say the heart doesn’t feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a...

Death never mattered at those times – in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent for ever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the...

Had a couple of drinks by myself. It was a mistake. Have I got to give up drinking, too? If I eliminate everything, how will I exist? I was somebody who loved Maurice and went...

That was the worst period of all: it is my profession to imagine, to think in images: fifty times through the day, and immediately I woke during the night, a curtain would rise and the...

I have loved no part of the world like this and I have loved no women as I love you. You’re my human Africa. I love your smell as I love these smells. I love...

I know one thing you don’t. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn’t teach you that at school.’Rose didn’t answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her....

Did you find anything special?’ Blackie asked.T. nodded. ‘Come over here,’ he said, ‘and look.’ Out of both pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. ‘Old Misery’s savings,’ he said. ‘Mike ripped out the mattress,...

This was hell then; it wasn’t anything to worry about: it was just his own familiar room.

He had stylized himself–life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one...

It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.

A man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.

Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.

You are all alike, you people. You never learn the truth–that God knows nothing.

Me? You are laughing at me. Put your hand here. This has no theology.’ I mocked myself while I made love. I flung myself into pleasure like a suicide on to a pavement.

As long as one suffers one lives.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see –...