The manuscript may go forth from the writer to return with a faithfulness passing the faithfulness of the boomerang or the homing pigeon.

Why is humanity so excessive in the way it does things? The golden mean seems out of fashion.

Once learnt, this business of cooking was to prove an ever growing burden. It scarcely bears thinking about, the time and labour that man and womankind has devoted to the preparation of dishes that are to melt and vanish in a moment like smoke or a dream, like a shadow, and as a post that hastes by, and the air closes behind them, afterwards no sign where they went is to be found.

Publishers of course have you altogether in their grip; if they say you must do a thing you have jolly well got to do it.

Work is a dull thing; you cannot get away from that. The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is not, unfortunately, always compatible with continuing to exist at all.

I seldom meet actors, they are to me bright strange fishes swimming in an element alien to me; I feel that to meet them is to See Life.

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals -- or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all.