Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived very much that now I can enjoy everything so well

The best writing is certainly when you are in love

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made. Almost no new classics resemble other previous classics. At first people see only the awkwardness. Then they are not so perceptible. When they show so very awkwardly people think these awkwardnesses are the style and many copy them. This is regrettable.

Now a writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive by espousing a political cause, working for it, making a profession of believing in it, and if it wins he will be very well placed. All politics is a matter of working hard without reward, or with a living wage for a time, in the hope of booty later. A man can be a Fascist or a Communist and if his outfit gets in he can get to be an ambassador or have a million copies of his books printed by the Government or any of the other rewards the boys dream about.

One cat just leads to another." [Letter from Finca Vigia, Cuba, to his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1943).]

That every day should be a fiesta seemed to me a wonderful discovery.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.