The Beatties were always arguing, it gave them an interest in life.

One of the stock Sydney jokes is of the census-taker who enquires: 'How many children have you, ma'am?' 'Two living and three in Melbourne.'

To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all.

Africa is cruel...it takes your heart and grinds it into powdered stone - and no-one minds

You cannot sell a blemished apple in the supermarket, but you can sell a tasteless one provided it is shiny, smooth, even, uniform and bright.

English tradition debars from dinner-table conversation almost all topics that might interest the conversers and insists upon strict adherence to banalities.

[... vastly different peoples live and work side by side but rarely come together, like the arms of an egg beater that] whirled independently and never touched, so that perhaps one arm never knew the other was there; yet they were together, turned by the same handle, and the cake was mixed by both.