Very few [doctors] are men of science in any very serious sense; they're men of technique.

"There is no disputing about tastes," says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.

Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.

To this day I am indulgent toward orchestras that are trying to lift themselves in the world, while critics are busy assuring them that they are not the Vienna Philharmonic and never will be.

The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.

The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights, actors and audiences - a figure dreaded, and occasionally comic, but never welcome, never loved.

The women we really love are the women who complete us, who have the qualities we can borrow and so become something nearer to whole men. Just as we complete them, of course; it’s not a one-way thing. Leola and I, when romance was stripped away, were too much alike; our strengths and weaknesses were too nearly the same. Together we would have doubled our gains and our losses, but that isn’t what love is.