The older one gets the more one comes to resemble oneself.

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.

I prefer old age to the alternative.

Only soldiers and labouring men can appreciate how glorious it really is to lie late in bed in winter-time. When your life revolves around having to to be at work at seven o'clock in the morning you know everything about that ghastly lep up still half asleep and the rush to put your head under a tap of ice-cold water with the barbarous object of shocking yourself awake.

When you hit seventy you sleep sounder, you feel more alive than when you were thirty. Obviously it's healthier to have women on your mind than on your knees.

Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition.

The French are true romantics. They feel the only difference between a man of forty and one of seventy is thirty years of experience.