Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.

Pully, hauly, tug with a will; the gods wiggle waggle, but the sky stands still.

Isn't it remarkable how everyone who knew [D.H.] Lawrence has felt compelled to write about him? Why, he's had more books written about him than any writer since Byron!

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are.

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'