I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.

Riposte of "that old lady in the anecdote who was accused by her nieces of being illogical," Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?

We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.

It is never possible for a novelist to deny time inside the fabric of his novel: he must cling, however lightly, to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable tapeworm, otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in his case, is a blunder.

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.

Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.

Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.