"It is typical of Oxford," I said, "to start the new year in autumn."

Suffering is none the less acute and much more lasting when it is put into words.

Beavers bred in captivity, inhabiting a concrete pool, will, if given the timber, fatuously go through all the motions of damming an ancestral stream.

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed.

That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.

One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.

You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.