What's the matter with this country is the matter with the lot of us individually - our sense of personality is a sense of outrage.

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.

With no banal reassuring grown-ups present, with grown-up intervention taken away, there is no limit to the terror strange children feel of each other, a terror life obscures but never ceases to justify. There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie; when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.

The most steady, the most self-sufficient nature depends, more than it knows, on its few chosen stimuli.

to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere.

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.