There is no ordinary run of mankind, there are only individuals who are totally different. And whether a man is naked and black and stands on one foot in Sudan or is clothed in some kind of costume in a bus in England, they are still individuals of entirely different characters.

Its theme-- the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters-- was perhaps presumptuously large, but I make no apology for it.

Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

But in the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.

Beerbohm was a genius of the purest kind. He stands at the summit of his art.

The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know existed.

You don't remove the evil in a person by killing the person.