Everything had been based on a kind of certainty, a sense of man at the center of things, a sense of order and hierarchy. And suddenly, almost simultaneously, extraordinary discoveries are made.

Literary studies were no more than a series of autopsies performed by heartless technicians. Worse than autopsies: biopsies. Vivisection. Even movies, which I love more than anything, more than life itself, they even do it with movies these days.

Better sexy and racy Than sexist and racist

...the reality of intelligent British speech... uses blasphemus, coital and cloacal expletives as a matter of course.

I never quite got the hang of the getting drunk & fondling the thighs [of all the cumbersome young males] business... whether that makes me a gallant & proper gentleman, a cowardly wuss or an unadventurous prude, I cannot make out

There is no right language or wrong language any more than there are right or wrong clothes.

Just as it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, it is the belief in shamefulness that is the root of all misery.