Thomas Beecham was a pompous little band-master who stood against everything creative in the art of his time.

The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself; and this absurdly optimistic assumption so dominates the republic that it has bred all its gross social injustices.

I knew words were like chains, they held me back . . . the act of description taints the description.

Edith Sitwell's interest in art was largely confined to portraits of herself.

Art is a statement of one in the face of all; not a statement by one for the use of all.

The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that, not a disinterested love of science, and certainly not wisdom, is why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things - as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to a perfect humanity, but to a perfect lightning-flash.

Just those three words, said and meant. I love you. They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer. His fairy story.