It [Cambridge] wasn't a holy grail in the sense that I'd never been to Cambridge. But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.

I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.

Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards.

Why is it always the "intelligent" people who are socialists?

Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.