I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read.

It is a waste of time to dissipate one's moral zeal in disapproving of royal persons who have mistresses.

Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.

Women say . . . that if men had to have babies there would soon be no babies in the world. . . . I have sometimes wished that some clever man would actually have a baby in some new labor-saving way; then all men could take it up, and one of the oldest taunts in the world would be stilled forever.

Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.

Fiction is not photography, it's oil painting.

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