The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

Their quarrel was no more surprising than are most quarrels — inevitable at the time, incredible afterwards.

One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.

Like all her friends, I miss her greatly...But...I am sure there is no case for lamentation...Virginia Woolf got through an immense amount of work, she gave acute pleasure in new ways, she pushed the light of the English language a little further against darkness. Those are facts.

A facade of skyscrapers facing a lake and behind the facade, every type of dubiousness.

The historian records, but the novelist creates.

Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.