I pulled myself up and told myself to stop these ridiculous thoughts, wondering why it is that we can never stop trying to analyse the motives of people who have no personal interest in us, in the vain hope of finding that perhaps they may have just a little after all.

Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.

There are some things too dreadful to be revealed, and it is even more dreadful how, in spite of our better instincts,we long to know about them.

Of course it's all right for librarians to smell of drink.

The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.

Perhaps I need some shattering experience to awaken and inspire me, or at least to give me some emotion to recollect in tranquility. But how to get it? Sit here and wait for it or go out and seek it? . . . I expect it will be sit and wait.

I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.