Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

The modern writer who has influenced me most is W. Somerset Maugham .

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.

How right the working classes are in their "materialism." How right they are to realize that the belly comes before the soul, not in the scale of values but in point of time!

Politically, Swift was one of those people who are driven into a sort of perverse Toryism by the follies of the progressive party of the moment.