I never can understand how two men can write a book together; to me that's like three people getting together to have a baby.

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

She told me later that she had made a kind of note of me in her mind, as, scanning the shelf for a particular book, one will sometimes have one's attention caught by another, take it down, glance at the title page and saying "I must read that, too, when I've the time," replace it and continue the search.

The sky over London was glorious, ochre and madder, as though a dozen tropic suns were simultaneously setting round the horizon . . . Everywhere the shells sparkled like Christmas baubles.

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.

Saints are simply men & women who have fulfilled their natural obligation which is to approach God.

In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice.