English life is seventh-eighths below the surface, like an iceberg, and living in England for a year constitutes merely an introduction to an introduction to an introduction to it.

The integration of the Negro into American society is one of the most exciting challenges to self-development and self-mastery that any nation of people ever faced.

From a purely tourist standpoint, Oxford is overpowering, being so replete with architecture and history and anecdote that the visitor's mind feels dribbling and helpless, as with an over-large mouthful of nougat.

The attitude of the English towards English history reminds one a good deal of the attitude of a Hollywood director towards love.

The idea is that inside every human being, however unprepossessing, there is a glorious, talented, and overwhelmingly attractive personality. Nonsense. Inside each of us is a mess of unruly, primitive impulses, and these can sometimes, under the strenuous self-discipline and dedication of art, result in notable creativity.

The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to dinner.

Americans (I, I'm afraid, among them) go around carelessly assuming they're tolerant the way they go around carelessly saying, 'You ought to be in pictures.' But in the clinches, they turn out to be tolerant about as often as they turn out to be Clark Gable.