“Things are always different than what they might be…If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.”

Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?

I think I don’t regret a single “excess” of my responsive youth I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.

I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say – feel for all you’re worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.

We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art…what we are talking about and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered.

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary.

Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!

The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.

Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

However British you may be, I am more British still.

And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.

I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I’m very glad therefore you’ve been a part of it.

I don’t want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.

Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity.

Anything that I do, I try to make it as good as I possibly can.

It’s not easy for a mother and son to sing a duet. You can’t just sing about anything.

I thought anything might happen if I wasn’t vigilant. I didn’t eat. I didn’t go out. I didn’t want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul.

You must forge your own path for it to mean anything.

You haven’t done anything wrong. You just haven’t done anything, and that’s what’s wrong.

Suddenly we had become these people who didn’t drink anything but kale, who ended many of our conversations with tears, and for whom no future was guaranteed. It was kind of funny.

Don’t say anything about this to anybody. Any one would say that I am trying to play the good-natured philosopher. I am neither benefactor nor philosopher, but just a human being, and my charities are the pleasantest expense I have on these journeys.

I think I would cease to accomplish anything productive, would quickly dispense with all human contact, and would very well end up with a nasty case of arthritis in my over-used digits from constant gameplay.