Elgar is not manic enough to be Russian, not witty or pointilliste enough to be French, not harmonically simple enough to be Italian and not stodgy enough to be German. We arrive at his Englishry by pure elimination.

I think art is sublimated libido. You can’t be a eunuch priest, and you can’t be a eunuch artist.

If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.

To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.

Civilised my syphilised yarbles.

But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning vonny earth and the stars and the old Luna up there. ... And all that cal.

I wrote much because I was paid little. I had no great desire to leave a literary name behind me.