One could laugh at the world better if it didn't mix tender kindliness with its brutality.

Sex is the one thing you cannot really swindle; and it is the centre of the worst swindling of all, emotional swindling.... Sex lashes out against counterfeit emotion, and is ruthless, devastating against false love.

Sunday night meant, in the dark, wintry, rainy Midlands ... anywhere where two creatures might stand and squeeze together and spoon.... Spooning was a fine art, whereas kissing and cuddling are calf-processes.

If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule.

Don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?

I like to write when I feel spiteful; it's like having a good sneeze.

It is a curious thing how poets tend to become ascetics.... Even a debauch for them is a self-flagellation. They go on the loose in cruelty against themselves, admitting that they are pandering to, and despising, the lower self.