You have to be a product of the product.

When people really hate one another, the tension within them can sometimes make itself felt throughout a room, like atmospheric waves, first hot, then cold, wafted backwards and forwards as if in an invisible process of air conditioning, creating a pervasive physical disturbance.

Writing is above all a question of instinct.

Books do furnish a room.

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

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

[T]here is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing.