I also know Patrick White in Australia, both personally and as a writer, and Salman Rushdie in India.

Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.

He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life,where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet.

We're not savages. We're English.

The Navy's a very gentlemanly business. You fire at the horizon to sink a ship and then you pull people out of the water and say, 'Frightfully sorry, old chap.'

One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.

At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.