It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.

Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.

So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor.

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

Once you get to know your neighbors, you are no longer free, you are all tangled up, you have to stop and speak when you are out and you never feel safe when you are in.

The great and recurrent question about Abroad is, is it worth the trouble of getting there?

Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.

To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder.

The impulse to ask questions is among the more primitive human lusts.

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals -- or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all.

Only one hour in the normal day is more pleasurable than the hour spent in bed with a book before going to sleep, and that is the hour spent in bed with a book after being called in the morning.

Coming to terms with the fact that my marriage was a failure was devastating and very difficult.

My musician friends are banned from playing concerts in China because they share the same views as I do. My name cannot appear on the web, because my opinion is different from the Party.

When watering your plants, try to talk to them - say something like, Hold it right there and then shoot them with water gun.

A red, red rose, all wet with dew, With leaves of green by red shot through.

We were always dreaming of how it was going to be.

The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.

India has been contributing very much to the reconstruction of Afghanistan; we are strongly engaged there.

My onstage persona really is a persona, you know, and really the moment I step onstage, it kind of kicks into gear.

When you write or sing a song that means something to you, you are saying, 'You know what? This is who I am!'

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins