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

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.

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.

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.

The world is full of places to which I want to return

Six months ago I had never been to England, and, certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows.