Dining out is a vice, a dissipation of spirit punished by remorse. We eat, drink, and talk a little too much, abuse all our friends, belch out our literary preferences and are egged on by accomplices in the audience to acts of mental exhibitionism. Such evenings cannot fail to diminish those who take part in them. They end on Monkey Hill.

When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.

The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life.

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.

In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient; afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.