If you want to be true to life, start lying about it

The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time.

I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.

I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.

Medieval theologians used to dispute how the angels in the heaven spent their time, when not balancing on needle points and singing anthems to the Lord. I know. They slump glued to their clouds, glasses at the ready, as the Archangel Micheal (that well-known slasher) and stonewalling St Peter open against the Devils XI. It could not be Heaven, otherwise.

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

They looked down on her; and she looked up through them.