She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked.

... the understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited.

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher

Anyone could write a novel given six weeks, pen paper, and no telephone or wife.

One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes to every page.

Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.

MGM bores me when I see them, but I don't see them much. They have been a help in getting me introductions to morticians, who are the only people worth knowing.