So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.

There exists a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.

What is not hereditary cannot be permanent.

There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.

Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.

I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

The real test of character is how you treat someone who has no possibility of doing you any good.