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.

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.

Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.

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

The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.

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

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