The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden.

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

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

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.

Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier - it's the first duty of all Englishmen - to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge.

If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed.