[London] is sentimental and tolerant. The attitude to foreigners is like the attitude to dogs: Dogs are neither human nor British, but so long as you keep them under control, give them their exercise, feed them, pat them, you will find their wild emotions are amusing, and their characters interesting.

It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.

Among the masked dandies of Edwardian comedy, Max Beerbohm is the most happily armored by a deep and almost innocent love of himself as a work of art.

The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature.

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.

The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.