none of what I know is out of books. ... I prefer tactual learning. Touching, on the quick of the sore nail, of present, mobile life. To toy, to gnaw, to tear: at the living element of pain. Like at a living drumstick.

money ... is only important when you have none; and though it may not be everything, it goes a very long way towards blocking up the winter draft of age.

anybody who drinks seriously is poor: so poor, poor, extra poor, me.

[On journalists:] They are as disruptive a menace to the public body: as grating turds in the intestines are to the private body.

[On journalists:] ... however lyingly libellous they may be: nobody can seriously hurt the reputation of a Great person. If he is hurt: he is not Great. They can but scratch at his skin with their mice nails.

England, where nobody ever says what they mean: and by denying feeling, kill it off stone-cold at the roots.

There is, happily, no limit to the faith of human nature in believing what it wants to believe.