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 often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent; but there is talent in the tongues.

Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.

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

On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away.

One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.

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