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

The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant they are.

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

The audiences certainly have declined. If I go to the theatre now I find people come there to eat and smoke and talk to one another. And look like scarecrows.

We can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales.

I think there's almost nothing I can't excuse except perhaps worshiping graven images. That seems to be idiotic.

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