Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.

Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.

The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.

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

The businessman who is a novelist is able to drop in on literature and feel no suicidal loss of esteem if the lady is not at home, and he can spend his life preparing without fuss for the awful interview.

I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.