It is the storytellers task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

Any man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.

How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one's presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another's day.

Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood - for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories.

We mustn't complain too much of being comedians - it's an honorable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed - that's all. We are bad comedians, we aren't bad men.

I had never known her before and I had never loved her so much. The more we know the more we love, I thought.

Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.