I do like Christmas on the whole.... In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year.

I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty unselfishness.

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.

People in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed.

It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead.

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

It is devilish difficult to criticise society & also create human beings.