For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

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

The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.

On the stage . . . masks are assumed with some regard to procedure; in everyday life, the participants act their parts without consideration either for suitability of scene or for the words spoken by the rest of the cast: the result is a general tendency for things to be brought to the level of farce even when the theme is serious enough.

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

It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.