It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.

I often wish I'd got on better with your father,' he said.

I grow numb; I grow stiff. How shall I break up this numbness which discredits my sympathetic heart?

Facts must be manipulated; some must be brightened; others shaded; yet, in the process, they must never lose their integrity.

Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

I cannot remember my past, my nose, or the colour of my eyes, or what my general opinion of myself is. Only in moments of emergency, at a crossing, at a kerb, the wish to preserve my body springs out and seizes me and stops me , here, before this omnibus. We insist, it seems, on living. Then again, indifference descends.