It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.

Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down.

As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against life.

Well, Buttermere, this is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?

Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past.

People have never lost what they think they have.

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,' said his cousin. 'But we seem to have no other.