Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.

Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.

Prep school, public school, university: these now tedious influences standardize English autobiography, giving the educated Englishman the sad if fascinating appearance of a stuffed bird of sly and beady eye in some old seaside museum. The fixation on school has become a class trait. It manifests itself as a mixture of incurious piety and parlour game.

It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening.

A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point.

How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.

Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.