Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

The more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back to a book is one of the things that makes reading so valuable.

For years they have been using the role of 'sex object' as a cover while they spied out the land.

Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.

Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live. There is in men, as Peter Quennell said, "a centrifugal tendency." In our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation.

In novels, I said, people are transfigured by love. They’re elevated, made different, lifted out of their ordinariness…It’s not so much to ask, I said. I just want love to live up to its publicity.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.