It seems to me like this. It's not a terrible thing - I mean, it may be terrible, but it's not damaging, it's not poisoning, to do without something one really wants. It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for t…

It isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that. People know they are in a society dead or…

What is so painful about that time is that nothing was disastrous. It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there we…

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.

'Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.'

You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier.