The prime necessities for success in life are money, athleticism, tailor made clothes and a charming smile.

Lack of money means discomfort, means squalid worries, means shortage of tobacco, means ever-present consciousness of failure-above all, it means loneliness.

Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Perhaps it is only when people are somewhere near the starvation level that they have anything to sing about.

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

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that can be given a name.