There are some situations from which one can only escape by acting like a devil or a lunatic.

He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.

He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside. Surely there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary?

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.

It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.

You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that evey sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.

To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.