The earth itself is slightly resistant to routine.

Unfortunately, all gatherings convened for the betterment of the human lot show a tendency to gas themselves, and not with laughing-gas either.

There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.

Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, 'In your lifetime, have you known peace?' wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word 'Yes,' if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, 'No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death.

If it be ungentlemanly to kiss and tell, it is still further from gentlemanliness to pray and tell.

For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition.

Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and give an account of an experience and nail it down so that it lasts for ever.