I spent an hour looking at pots and carpets in the museums the other day, until the desire to describe them became like the desire for the lusts of the flesh.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

to write a novel in the heart of London is next to an impossibility. I feel as if I were nailing a flag to the top of a mast in a raging gale.

But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them.

There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them.

Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure

I am not so gifted as at one time seemed likely.