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.

There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.