One does what one can, not what one cannot.

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.

That was what, ultimately, war did to you. It was not the physical dangers--the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think.

there is no fanatic like a religious fanatic.

Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid, spinsterish face and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it all as in the day's work....where crime is concerned, she's the goods.

It is really a hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.

In the midst of life, we are in death.