I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.

Well, why do you want a political career? Have you ever been in the House of Commons and taken a good square look at the inmates? As weird a gaggle of freaks and sub-humans as was ever collected in one spot.

Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.

Mr Beach was too well bred to be inquisitive, but his eyebrows here not. 'Ah!' he said. '?', cried the eyebrows. '? ? ?' Ashe ignored the eyebrows. ... Mr Beach's eyebrows were still mutely urging him to reveal all, but Ashe directed his gaze at that portion of the room which Mr Beach did not fill. He was hanged if he was going to let himself be hypnotized by a pair of eyebrows into incriminating himself.

If he had a mind, there was something on it.

I clutched at the brow. The mice in my interior had now got up an informal dance and were buck-and-winging all over the place like a bunch of Nijinskys.

I may as well tell you, here and now, that if you are going about the place thinking things pretty, you will never make a modern poet. Be poignant, man, be poignant!