“I’ve felt as if I didn’t exist, as if I were invisible, miles away from the world, miles away. You can’t imagine how much alone I’ve been all my life.”

Let us not waste love, it is rare enough.

I think being a woman is like being Irish, Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the time.

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.

I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.

Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.

I just enjoy translating, it’s like opening one’s mouth and hearing someone else’s voice emerge.

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.

Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.

Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. This is why all the world is a stage.

Youth is a marvelous garment.

The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.

Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life’s major mysteries.

I don’t think I can marry, I’m not fit for it, I’m not real enough. That’s the trouble. I’m a puppet that’s realised what’s wrong with itself and it’s horrible. I’m propped up somewhere all alone, watching the real people go past. I’m propped up crying in a corner.

I took a deep breath, however, and followed my rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this.

I figure that if God actually does exist, he is big enough to understand an honest difference of opinion.

To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.

The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate.

Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.

Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody’s fine feelings may be offended.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.

If love means that one person absorbs the other, then no real relationship exists any more. Love evaporates; there is nothing left to love. The integrity of self is gone.