"Never forget, she told the big brown eyes now fixed on her, it's not you but everything else around you that's wrong. If you feel all wrong you have every right to do so. It's not you it's all the rest of it. And if you feel things are weird it's because they are. After all, why else would you feel all wrong my son? No other reason in the world."

"I stared down at the cemetery and the sight felt rich, rewarding, physically so, in the actual eyes. The very eyeball itself felt good. I became the most recent person on earth to see that everyone in every single or double plot had known life in all its extremes. They had all known extreme pain and stress; all been overjoyed. All had been enchanted; and they'd all known extreme grief so bad they thought it must be meant for another species."

"[At an anti-vivisection demonstration] I went up to the ringleader, a tall, thin crusty with little braided beaded fussiness in his hair. 'I can't express to you all just how diametrically opposed I am to what you're saying. I mean, this sounds like a rhetorical figure, but it's not - I really mean this: I would genuinely go into any field and kill every single horse, cow, goat, sheep, dog, cat, rabbit, gerbil, if I honestly believed in my heart for just one moment, just one moment, that it might be a bit of a laugh.' By now, I had the fellow's Oxfam lapels in my fists. 'BECAUSE I AM SO BORED AND TIRED OF EVERYTHING SINCE SHE LEFT!!' Dropping my head onto his bony vegan shoulder, I sobbed loud and long, in great, wracking heaves and gasps. When I finally ceased and straightened up, my hands were full of small, plastic lapel-badges."

"The three eldest children of Necessity: God, the World and love."

"Love is God’s essence; Power but his attribute: therefore is his love greater than his power."

"Rose Macaulay is a wise guide, tolerant, generous-minded, liberal, courageous, cheerful, and her judgments of society and social values are always sound."

"Each wrong act brings with it its own anaesthetic, dulling the conscience and blinding it against further light, and sometimes for years."

"Cranks live by theory, not by pure desire. They want votes, peace, nuts, liberty and spinning-looms not because they love these things, as a child loves jam, but because they think they ought to have them. That is one element which makes the crank. Another is lack of proportion, the obsession with one desire or one principle to the minimising or exclusion of others; exaggeration, in fact."

"The best book she has written, and that is saying a lot."

"How fast and how loud foreigners talk ! It is a gift ; the British cannot talk so loud or so fast. They have too many centuries of fog in their throats."

"Words, living and ghostly, the quick and the dead, crowd and jostle the otherwise too empty corridors of my mind. ... To move among this bright, strange, often fabulous herd of beings, to summon them at my will, to fasten them on to paper like flies, that they may decorate it, this is the pleasure of writing."

""Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."

"Once learnt, this business of cooking was to prove an ever growing burden. It scarcely bears thinking about, the time and labour that man and womankind has devoted to the preparation of dishes that are to melt and vanish in a moment like smoke or a dream, like a shadow, and as a post that hastes by, and the air closes behind them, and afterwards no sign of where they went is to be found."

"The trouble about the fashions is, there are too many going on at once, and you can't follow them all. Sometimes, I think I will give them all up, and just be dowdy."

"To the politician we are something of a dark horse. He does not know what we want; he wishes he did. Do we know ourselves? Vaguely we know that we don't want the politician."

"Poem me no poems."

"Jane: What do you think of his book Arthur? Gideon: I don't think of it. I've had no reason to, particularly. I've not had to review it. ...I'm afraid I'm hopeless about novels just now, that's the fact. I'm sick of the form—slices of life served up cold in three hundred pages. Oh, it's very nice; it makes nice reading for people. But what's the use? Except, of course, to kill time for those who prefer it dead. But as things in themselves, as art, they've been ruined by excess. My critical sense is blunted just now. I can hardly feel the difference, though I can see it, between a good novel and a bad one. I couldn't write one, good or bad, to save my life, I know that. And I've got to the stage when I wish other people wouldn't. I wish everyone would shut up, so that we could hear ourselves think..."

"The lesson is that dying men must groan; And poets groan in rhymes that please the ear."

"This book — amber-clear, cool and with a good head — deserves a thoughtful swig even from people who never drink."

"How much of our literature, our political life, our friendships and love affairs, depend on being able to talk peacefully in a bar!"

"Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking."

"That man is great, and he alone, Who serves a greatness not his own."

"Who knows nothing base Fears nothing known."

"O be very sure That no man will learn anything at all, Unless he first will learn humility."

"I loved you ere I knew you: know you now, And, having known you, love you better still."

"Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can."

"Unseen hands delay The coming of what seems close in ken, And, contrary, the moment when we say "'Twill never come!" comes on us even then."

"Thought alone is eternal."

"'Tis more brave To live, than to die."

"As pure as a pearl, And as perfect: a noble and innocent girl."

"Life hath set No landmarks before us."

"To all facts there are laws. The effect has its cause, and I mount to the cause."

"We are our own fates. Our deeds Are our doomsmen. Man's life was made not for men's creeds, But men's actions."

"That's best Which God sends. 'Twas His will: it is mine."

"There is purpose in pain, Otherwise it were devilish."

"Those true eyes Too pure and too honest in aught to disguise The sweet soul shining through them."

"Do not think that years leave us and find us the same!"

"You know There are moments when silence, prolong'd and unbroken, More expressive may be than all words ever spoken."

"No true love can be without Its dread penalty—jealousy."

"Alas! must it be ever so? Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go, And fight our own shadows forever?"

"In life there are meetings which seem Like a fate."

"There's no weapon that slays Its victim so surely (if well aim'd) as praise."

"No star ever rose And set, without influence somewhere."

"We gain Justice, judgment, with years, or else years are in vain."

"'Twas a hand White, delicate, dimpled, warm, languid, and bland. The hand of a woman is often, in youth, Somewhat rough, somewhat red, somewhat graceless in truth; Does its beauty refine, as its pulses grow calm, Or as sorrow has cross'd the life-line in its palm."

"We are what we must, And not what we would be. I know that one hour Forestalls not another. The will and the power Are diverse."

"The world is a nettle; disturb it, it stings. Grasp it firmly, it stings not."

"Let any man show the world that he feels Afraid of its bark and ’t will fly at his heels: Let him fearlessly face it, ’t will leave him alone: But ’t will fawn at his feet if he flings it a bone."

"Whene'er I hear French spoken as I approve, I feel myself quietly falling in love."