If you're going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he'd better be real enough that you can smell his breath.

Yes, a war is inevitable. Firstly, there's you fellows who can't be trusted. And then there's the multitude who mean to have bathrooms and white enamel. Millions of them; all over the world. Not merely here. And there aren't enough bathrooms and white enamel in the world to go round.

New York is large, glamorous, easy-going, kindly and incurious, but above all it is a crucible - because it is large enough to be incurious.

He thought he suddenly understood. For the Lincon-shire sergeant-major the word Peace meant that a man could stand up on a hill. For him it meant someone to talk to.

[W]e are almost always in one place with our minds somewhere quite other.

And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me.

It was an odd friendship, but the oddnesses of friendships are a frequent guarantee of their lasting texture.