Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. Out of this is born irony, our dangerous and necessary tool.

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

Oh the piercing sadness of life in the midst of its ordinariness!

How rarely can happiness be really innocent and not triumphant, not an insult to the deprived.

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.

Every human soul has seen, perhaps before their birth, pure forms such as justice, temperance, beauty and all the great moral qualities which we hold in honour. We are moved towards what is good by the faint memory of these forms, simple and calm and blessed, which we saw once in a pure, clear light, being pure ourselves.

Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.