We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self.

Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.

Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph-green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree.

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

We may assume that we keep people waiting symbolically because we do not wish to see them and that our anxiety is due not to being late, but to having to see them at all.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.

While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

Well there's these things called books.... They are like TV for smart people

We mustn’t give trouble a shape before it throws its shadow.

Believe you are great and you will be great.

We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.

My mother was a housewife. My father was a garment worker.

The Wombat is a Joy, a Triumph, a Delight, a Madness!

Dieting makes me want to murder everyone around me.

You can call me a fat, balding, talentless old queen who can't sing, but you can't tell lies about me.

Let us lend cheerfully, for the time is pretty sure to come when we will wish to borrow.

We will not let governments off the hook. We will look to civil society to help us, to pin governments, to what they have committed to here. And we will report on it.