[T]ea, that uniquely English meal, that unnecessary collation at which no stimulants--neither alcohol nor meat--are served, that comforting repast of which to partake is as good as second childhood.

I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.

My paternal grandmother would not light a fire on the Sabbath and piled all Sunday's washing-up in a bucket, to be dealt with on Monday morning, because the Sabbath was a day of rest--a practice that made my paternal grandfather, the village atheist, as mad as fire. Nevertheless, he willed five quid to the minister, just to be on the safe side.

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

You were the living image of the entire Platonic shadow show, an illusion that could fill my emptiness with marvellous, imaginary things as long as, just as long as, the movie lasted, and then all would all vanish.

Sad; so sad, those smoky-rose, smoky-mauve evenings of late Autumn, sad enough to pierce the heart.

I think I want to be in love with you but I don't know how.