“His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.”

Beethoven for listening; Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven for playing as well as Bach and Prokofiev and so on. If I kept going, this list would spiral. It’s as wide as literature; in fact, it is probably wider.

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.

If I blow the conch and they don’t come back; then we’ve had it. We shan’t keep the fire going. We’ll be like animals. We’ll never be rescued.” “If you don’t blow, we’ll soon be animals anyway.

If faces were different when lit from above or below — what was a face? What was anything?

You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

We’re all mad, the whole damned race. We’re wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we’re all mad and in solitary confinement.

Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?

We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.

I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there.

The rules!” shouted Ralph, “you’re breaking the rules!” “Who cares?

No human endeavour can ever be wholly good… it must always have a cost.

I do think that art that doesn’t communicate is useless.

Which is better–to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?

A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn’t seen him on their box, buy the paperback.

Wherever the crowd goes run in the other direction. They’re always wrong.

The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act.

Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face – I know it’s an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.

The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom.

You don’t play for the crowd, you play for the country.

I’m a little more shy and not comfortable dancing in front of a large crowd.

Since the beginning, it was just the same. The only difference, the crowds are bigger now.

I’m with a crowd but so alone.