It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."

Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.

Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.

An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.

Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.

The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others; Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.

The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.