Sometimes the road was only a lane, with thick hawthorne hedges, and the green elms overhung it on either side so that when you looked up there was only a strip of blue sky between. And as you rode along in the warm, keen air you had a sensation that the world was standing still and life would last forever. Although you were pedaling with such energy you had a delicious feeling of laziness.

It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man.

You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.

Almost all the people who’ve had the most effect on me I seem to have met by chance, yet looking back it seems as though I couldn’t but have met them.

I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.