Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.

My father and I were never intimate in the sense of my coming to him with confidences or seeking advice. Our relationship was rather that of host and guest. Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

O God, make me good, but not yet.

There is practically no sense that is not violated every time we return from the country or the sea to Paris or London or New York.

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

They are a very decent generous lot of people out here and they don't expect you to listen.... It's the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard.