The importance of the ordinary citizen is very greatly underestimated - not so much by those in authority as by the ordinary citizen himself.

One is what one remembers: no more, no less.

Words were the only net to catch a mood, the only sure weapon against oblivion.

Things happen too quickly, crisis follows crisis, the soil of our minds is perpetually disturbed. Each of us, to relieve his feelings, broadcasts his own running commentary on the preposterous and bewildering events of the hour: and this, nowadays, is what passes for conversation.

It took me forty years on earth To reach this sure conclusion: There is no Heaven but clarity, No Hell except confusion.

I can't abide cats myself, but of course we have to have one in the kitchen to deal with the mice. I insisted on getting a black one, because anything else shows the dirt so in London.

To be put down in this world, and given only eighty years to get to know it in, is like being let loose in the United States of America for the first time with a high-powered car and unlimited gasoline - but with a visa that is valid for only a week. It's agonizing, that's what it is.