What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with what she doesn't understand!

Belfastas uncivilised as ever--savage black mothers in houses of dark red brick, friendly manufacturers too drunk to entertain you when you arrive. It amuses me till I get tired.

The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.

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.

We move between two darknesses.

An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness - much as plums have to be put into bad pudding to make it palatable.