the autobiography is at one and the same time a single element in the series of the writer's created works and an interpretation of the whole series.

He had the appeal of a very young dog of a very large breed -- a kind of amiable absurdity.

Still, it doesn't do to murder people, no matter how offensive they may be.

Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him.

Unlike music or poetry or painting, food rouses no response in passionate and emotional youth. Only when the surge of the blood is quieted does gastronomy come into its own with philosophy and theology and the sterner delights of the mind.

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.

You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.