He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.

We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?

A middling talent makes for a more serene life.

There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.

I hate solitude but I am afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself and to turn it into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls.

emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. this is why all the world is a stage.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.