The knives of jealousy are honed on details.

there must be a routine to life, a framework to hang life on. Routines were what kept you sane, gave you something to do at this moment and at that, definite places to go, positive things to do. Abandon it and that way madness lies.

I get a lot of letters from people. They say "I want to be a writer. What should I do?" I tell them to stop writing to me and to get on with it.

It's living - a broad spectrum of living - that teaches you how to live, not philosophy. Philosophy teaches you how to think.

It is not so much true that the world loves a lover as that the lover loves all the world.

I can't exist without books.

the English, although partakers in the most variable and quixotic climate in the world, never become used to its vagaries, but comment upon them with shock and resentment as if all their lives had been spent in the predictable monsoon.