We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

until I have been able to bury my head so deep in dear London that I can forget that I have ever been away I am inconsolable.

Eating reveals the characteristic grossness of the human race and also the in-built failure of its satisfactions. We arrive eager, we stuff ourselves and we go away depressed and disappointed and probably feeling a bit queasy into the bargain. It's an image of the déçu in human existence. A greedy start and a stupefied finish. Waiters, who are constantly observing this cycle, must be the most disillusioned of men.

I see myself as Rhoda, not Mary Tyler Moore.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

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

There is nothing like early promiscuous sex for dispelling life's bright mysterious expectations.