Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic - that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. and that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed.

I don't believe that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed.

There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.

At first it was impressive, but after half and hour deadly monotonous. It was like everything German - overdone.

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.

I am annoyed to find myself continually described by people whom I have never set eyes on as bad-tempered.

We are American at puberty. We die French.