We each live in a private, distorted, individual world - stars turning in space, warmed for a moment by each other's light, then lost in infinite distance.

the damned book I am writing is like the driveling of a weak-kneed sea calf. If I were sufficiently strong minded, I should tear it up an start again. But I don't.

The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.

Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?

Sorrow and frustration have their power. The world is moved by people with great discontents. Happiness is a drug. It can make men blind and deaf and insensible to reality. There are times when only sorrow can give to sorrow.

The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.

[On golf:] One of the most distressing defects of civilization.