Have you seen a room from which faith has gone? Like a marriage from which love has gone. And patience, patience everywhere like a fog.

Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.

Sometimes I get so tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him for ever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can't realise that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here.

I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It's the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate.

Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.

Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?