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

The unconscious mind has a habit of asserting itself in the afternoon.

Reviewers do not read books with much care . . . their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist.

If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others.

Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare.

And, my brothers, it was real satisfaction to me to waltz-left two three, right two three-and carve left cheeky and right cheeky, so that like two curtains of blood seemed to pour out at the same time, one on either side of his fat filthy oily snout in the winter starlight.

It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.