Applied Science is a conjuror, whose bottomless hat yields impartially the softest of Angora rabbits and the most petrifying of Medusas.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

... one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.

Plasticene and self-expression will not solve the problems of education. Nor will technology and vocational guidance; nor the classics and the Hundred Best Books.

To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations.

...we were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as 'being in one's right mind.

There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.