I find it extraordinary that a straightforward if inelegant device for ensuring the survival of the species should involve human beings in such emotional turmoil. Does sex have to be taken so seriously?

Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.

Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you.

If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.

Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.

Books of quotations ... afford me one of the most undemanding but satisfying forms of reading pleasure.

I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn't see the skull beneath the skin.