I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.

I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description

One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.

I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.

My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out.

You cannot eat your cake and have it.

What birds were they? (...) He listened to the cries: like the squeak of mice be- hind the wainscot : a shrill twofold note. But the notes were long and shrill and whirring, unlike the cry of vermin, falling a third or a fourth and trilled as the flying beaks clove the air. Their cry was shrill and clear and fine and falling like threads of silken light unwound from whirring spools.