Oh hearts! Nobody gets through life without a broken heart. The important thing is to break the heart so that when it mends it will be stronger than before.

The division between art and deviousness and crime is sometimes as thin as a cigarette paper.

The clerisy are those who seek, and find, delight and enlargement of life in books. The clerisy are those for whom reading is a personal art.

Did you know that Puritanism went hand in hand with dirt, that Oliver Cromwell put a 100 per cent tax on soap and that the repeal of the soap tax was one of the most popular acts of Charles II at his Restoration?

The nature of happiness is such that happiness retreats the more intensely you pursue it.

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.

And why should it not be terrifying? A little terror, in my view, is good for the soul, when it is terror in the face of a noble object.