How do you tell a valuable French book?' 'First there are the pictures. Then it is a question of the quality of the pictures. Then it is the binding. If a book is good, the owner will have it bound properly. All books in English are bound, but bound badly. There is no way of judging them.

If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.

Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.

And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.

It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea.

Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.

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.