Failure or success seems to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is the wriggle.

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?

Towns are after all excrescences, grey fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.

The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power.

...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out.