He added that a Frenchman in the train had given him a great sandwich that so stank of garlic that he had been inclined to throw it at the fellow's head.

The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. After forty-five years of mixing with one's kind, one ought to have acquired the habit of being able to know something about one's fellow beings. But one doesn't

It is not merely that people must die and people must suffer, if not here, then there. But what is dreadful is that the world goes on and people go on being stupidly cruel - in the old ways and all the time.

What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself.

The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of the fact he is reading a book.

He wouldn't write a letter because he couldn't without beginning it 'Dear Sylvia' and ending it 'Yours sincerely' or 'truly' or 'affectionately.' He's that sort of precise imbecile. I tell you he's so formal he can't do without all the conventions there are and so truthful he can't use half of them.

He added that a Frenchman in the train had given him a great sandwich that so stank of garlic that he had been inclined to throw it at the fellow's head.