"It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is forei…"

"Yes, well I had all my serious illnesses in late middle age. And now I'm just stuck, I'm afraid."

"I found people were telling stories to themselves without knowing it. It seemed to me that people were living a sort …"

"The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it."

"Mass society destroys the things it is told are its inheritance. It is rarely possible to see the Abbey without being…"

"Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere."

"How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit."

"In her businesslike way she thought that her life had begun when she was a very young woman and she really did look l…"

"The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one r…"

"Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audi…"