He lay back for a little in his bed thinking about the smells of food . . . of the intoxicating breath of bakeries and dullness of buns. . . . He planned dinners, of enchanting aromatic foods . . . endless dinners, in which one could alternate flavour with flavour from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of old brandy.

Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.

Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.'-William Boot

Once you start changing a name, you see, there's no reason ever to stop. One always hears one that sounds better.

I had been there before; I knew all about it.

No one is ever holy without suffering.

No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to Hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretends it's God and hate that.