All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.

It isn't only living people who die, it is great stretches of living, which can die even when the people who lived there still exist.

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.

... A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is like a beautiful hand with long fingers reaching out to pluck a perfect fruit, without error,for the accurate eye knows well it is growing just there on the branch, while Ulysses is the fumbling of a horned hand in darkness after a doubted jewel.

If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.

Like all bad drivers, he [Henry Andrews] thought he was the best driver in the world...

To those who fall and hurt themselves one runs with comfort; by those who lie dangerously stricken by a disease one sits and waits.