I am in love - and, my God, it is the greatest thing that can happen to a man. I tell you, find a woman you can fall in love with. Do it. Let yourself fall in love. If you have not done so already, you are wasting your life.

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.

I can't do with mountains at close quarters - they are always in the way, and they are so stupid, never moving and never doing anything but obtrude themselves.

The near end of the street was rather dark and had mostly vegetable shops. Abundance of vegetables - piles of white and green fennel, like celery, and great sheaves of young, purplish, sea-dust-coloured artichokes . . . long strings of dried figs, mountains of big oranges, scarlet large peppers, a large slice of pumpkin, a great mass of colours and vegetable freshness. . . .

I will wait and watch till the day of David at last shall be finished, and wisdom no more fox-faced, and the blood gets back its flame.

The English people on the whole are surely the nicest people in the world, and everybody makes everything so easy for everyone else, that there is almost nothing to resist at all.

Gods die with men who have conceived them. But the god-stuff roars eternally, like the sea, with too vast a sound to be heard.