I need words and print... I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.

What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering--that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.

I've always thought that very few people grow old as admirably as academics. At least books never let them down.

London, how could one ever be tired of it?

Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all. We disregard them, we say they forget, because they have not the words to make us remember. ... By the time they learn to speak they have forgotten the details of their complaints, and so we never know. They forget so quickly, we say, because we cannot contemplate the fact that they never forget.

Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.

I need words and print... I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.