If every museum in the New World were emptied, if every famous building in the Old World were destroyed and only Venice saved, there would be enough there to fill a full lifetime with delight. Venice, with all its complexity and variety, is in itself the greatest surviving work of art in the world.

The anguished suspense of watching the lips you hunger for, framing the words, the death sentence, of sheer triteness!

The sky over London was glorious, ochre and madder, as though a dozen tropic suns were simultaneously setting round the horizon . . . Everywhere the shells sparkled like Christmas baubles.

There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.

Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.

I never can understand how two men can write a book together; to me that's like three people getting together to have a baby.

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.