No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind.

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.

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.

Marriage is the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone until death breaks the record.

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.

The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals

When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.