“I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.”

I was so astonished that I could think of nothing to say, but wondered irrelevantly if I was to be caught with a teapot in my hand on every dramatic occasion.

There are no sick people in North Oxford. They are either dead or alive. It’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference, that’s all.

I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.

My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the ‘stream of consciousness’ type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.

Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there.

How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself. Everybody should try it.

She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.

Once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends.

The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.

There are some things too dreadful to be revealed, and it is even more dreadful how, in spite of our better instincts,we long to know about them.

You know Mildred would never do anything wrong or foolish. I reflected a little sadly that this was only too true and hoped I did not appear too much that kind of person to others. Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing.

Of course it’s all right for librarians to smell of drink.

I imagine the proverb about too many cooks spoiling the broth can be applied to writing as well as anything else. The poetical or literary broth is better cooked by one person.

Oh, this coming back to an empty house,’ Rupert thought, when he had seen her safely up to her door. People – though perhaps it was only women – seemed to make so much of it. As if life itself were not as empty as the house one was coming back to.

There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.

Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.

It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe; you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.

I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.

Because if a woman’s heart was free a man might have hope.

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

I might be an endangered species.

What happens with DMT is you leap over all the barriers in the first few seconds. Unlike mushrooms where over hours and hours on a high dose you might navigate yourself to the center of the mandala, DMT is like being struck by metaphysical lightening.

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, Jesus himeself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.