His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.

Have you at any time been detained in a mental home or similar institution? If so, give particulars.' 'I was at Scone College, Oxford, for two years,' said Paul.

The great charm in argument is really finding one's own opinions, not other people's.

If it could only be like this always - always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper.

Novel-writing is a highly skilled and laborious trade. One does not just sit behind a screen jotting down other people's conversation. One has for one's raw material every single thing one has ever seen or heard or felt, and one has to go over that vast, smoldering rubbish-heap of experience, half stifled by fumes and dust, scraping and delving until one finds a few discarded valuables. Then one has to assemble these tarnished and dented fragments, polish them, set them in order, and try to make a coherent and significant arrangement of them.

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

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.