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.

The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. Lovers, even book lovers, tend to cling. No one-night stands or "reads" for them.

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

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.

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

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 was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.