First sentences are doors to worlds.

The model of modern Western civilization is the virus: the pure bit of information, which turns its environment into endless reproductions of itself.

I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.

The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of ours.

In general she had found that the main drawback in being a man was that conversations were less interesting.

Crankish attacks on the freedom to read are common at present. When backed and coordinated by organized groups, they become sinister.

Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.