Piers is always going on about how he hated Stowe. As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can't have affected you.

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.

He knew the world and its absurdities as only an intelligent Irishman can; which is to say that where his knowledge or memory failed him, his imagination was always ready to fill the gap.

There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive.

You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts.

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

I read and I read; and I was like a medieval king, I had fallen in love with the picture long before I saw the reality.