The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.

In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

Let's face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

The Puritanical nonsense of excluding children and therefore to some extent women from pubs has turned these places into mere boozing shops instead of the family gathering places that they ought to be.

The heresy of heresies was common sense.