He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending to be whole.

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.

She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked.

If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.

Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.

No one is ever holy without suffering.

I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence.