Anna was saying to herself: why do I always have this awful need to make other people see things as I do? It's childish, why should they? What it amounts to is that I'm scared of being alone in what I feel.

Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.

It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda.

The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great.

I'm going to make the obvious point that maybe the word neurotic means the condition of being highly conscious and developed. The essence of neurosis is conflict. But the essence of living now, fully, not blocking off to what goes on, is conflict. In fact I've reached the stage where I look at people and say - he or she, they are whole at all because they've chosen to block off at this stage or that. People stay sane by blocking off, by limiting themselves.

I'll be pleased when I'm dead. That will let me off worrying about all these wars.

How boring these emotions are that we're caught in and can't get free of, no matter how much we want to.