I'm a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.

. . . life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which . . .

Roger Fry is painting me. It is too like me at present, but he is confident he will be able to alter that. Post-Impressionism is at present confined to my lower lip... and to my chin.

Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.

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.

I have said that each aspect of the novel demands a different quality of the reader. Well, the prophetic aspect demands two qualities: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour.

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