Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on.

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.

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.

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.

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

We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.

Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on.