The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal, - that is they have ceased…

Simon Amstell: So Penny, you used to do a fashion column for the Daily Mail, didn't you? Penny Smith: Yes I've done many strange things in my time. Simon Amste…

The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.