For most people it's easier to support an eminent person in deserved disgrace than an obscure one who has been wronged.

That was the trouble with experience; it taught you that most people were capable of anything, so that loyalty was never quite on firm ground -- or, rather, became a matter of pardoning offenses instead of denying their existence.

I wasn't convinced a shop girl would know the word 'Oedipal.

In England, life is a long process of composing oneself.

When people say of their tragedies, 'I don't often think of it now,' what they mean is it has entered permanently into their thoughts, and colors everything.

Did you ever notice how easy it is to forgive a person any number of faults for one endearing characteristic, for a certain style, or some commitment to life - while someone with many good qualities is insupportable for a single defect if it happens to be a boring one?

It's nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of.