We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.

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.

Artists don't create society, they reflect it

You have to find a way to laugh a little bit each day despite everything, or your heart will simply run out of the joy that makes it go.

... let us recall the well-known statement of a university professor in the Republic of the Massagetes: 'Not the faculty but His Excellency the General can properly determine the sum of two and two.'

Magic gives you a lot of choices," Grandad says. "Most of them are bad.

I try to be athletic.

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.

A comfortable, convenient life is not a real life - the more comfortable, the less alive. The most comfortable life is in the grave.

I'm just a socialist at heart.

After that I didn't listen to music as much because '70s music just wasn't... I remember all the songs, but it wasn't because I was into them, you know what I mean?

The world might be a very scary place if it were only run by Virgos.