Being very famous is not the fun it sounds. It merely means you're being chased by a lot of people and you lose your privacy.

I have a strong antipathy to everything connected with gardens, gardening and gardeners. . . . Gardening seems to me a kind of admission of defeat. . . . Man was made for better things than pruning his rose trees. The state of mind of the confirmed gardener seems to me as reprehensible as that of the confirmed alcoholic. Both have capitulated to the world. Both have become lotus eaters and drifters.

The real issue is not whether two and two make four or whether two and two make five, but whether life advances by men who love words or by men who love living.

It seemed perfectly possible that, in spite of my certainty of my own genius, I might die of some illness, or perhaps even in a street accident, before I had ever glimpsed the meaning of life. My moods of happiness and self-confidence convinced me that I had a "destiny" to become a famous writer, and to be remembered as one of the most important thinkers of the century.

Our language has become a tired and inefficient thing in the hands of journalists and writers who have nothing to say.

Being very famous is not the fun it sounds. It merely means you're being chased by a lot of people and you lose your privacy.

Criminals interest me, because they're driven by the same desires as we are, but they take these disastrous shortcuts and end up in a real mess.