In the dream of approaching forty I saw myself as about to die and realized that I was no longer myself, but a creature inhabited entirely by parasites, as a caterpillar is occupied by the grubs of the ichneumon fly. Gin, whisky, sloth, fear, guilt, tobacco, had made themselves my inquilines; alcohol sloshed about within, while tendrils of melon and vine grew out of ears and nostrils; my mind was a worn gramophone record, my true self was such a ruin as to seem non-existent, and all this had happened in the last three years.

English Law: where there are two alternatives: one intelligent, one stupid; one attractive, one vulgar; one noble, one ape-like; one serious and sincere, one undignified and false; one far-sighted, one short; EVERYBODY will INVARIABLY choose the latter.

Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.

It is the fear of middle-age in the young, of old-age in the middle-aged, which is the prime cause of infidelity, that infallible rejuvenator.

Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality.

The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us.

Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster.