I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.

Self-pity is essentially humorless, devoid of that lightness of touch which gives understanding of life.

Books do furnish a room.

One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

Dinner at the Huntercombes' possessed only two dramatic features - the wine was a farce and the food a tragedy.

People think that because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that.

I get a warm feeling among my books.