Dearest Charles-- I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start... I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again, but the white raspberries are ripe. I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits. Love or what you will. S.

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed.

O God, make me good, but not yet.

Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn't end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever.

Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist.

Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.

It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.