I have in my life concentrated more on self-expression than self-denial.

Don't mind the five or more million Germans. Stalin will see to them they will cease to exist.

I'd prefer to be right than consistent.

The pictorial battlefield becomes a sea of mud mercifully veiled by the fog of war.

It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray...We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness for fiction forbade him to forsake it for fact. Such constancy is a defect in an historian.

I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.

Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it ... And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue - out of charity and out of chivalry ... - and said, "Are these toys any good to you? They amuse some people."