Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.

All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.

"What war?" said the Prime Minister sharply. "No one has said anything to me about a war. I really think I should have been told. I'll be damned," he said defiantly, "if they shall have a war without consulting me. What's a cabinet for, if there's not more mutual confidence than that? What do they want a war for anyway?"

That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.

If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.

Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.

My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.