Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box.

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

Life is a predicament which precedes death.

The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.

I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.

I've struck up a tremendous intimacy with Conte Alberto, and we literally can't live without each other. He is the first object my eyes greet in the morning, and the last at night.

New York is appalling, fantastically charmless and elaborately dire.