He had no strength for any other war than his own solitary struggle to keep alive.

All fates are ‘worse than death’.

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.

Yes, cider and tinned salmon are the staple diet of the agricultural classes.

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.

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

Beware of writing to me. I always answer ... My father spent the last 20 years of his life writing letters. If someone thanked him for a wedding present, he thanked them for thanking him and there was no end to the exchange but death.