Disappointment tears the bearable film off life.

Each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant; impossible socially, but full scale; and it's the knockings and battering we sometimes hear in each other that keep our banter from utter banality.

Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realise themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt.

When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.

The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.

... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.

Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.