When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

Every writer and artist wonders what in the world people of other professions can find to live for.

The cliché is dead poetry. English, being the language of an imaginative race, abounds in clichés, so that English literature is always in danger of being poisoned by its own secretions.

Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values.

When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.

Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death.