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

Honestly, I haven’t the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?

I hope my books make statements about our general condition.

I don’t think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we’re concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work.

The mask was a thing on it’s own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.

Which is better — to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is? Which is better — to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill? Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That’s so many pages longhand.

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

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?

I believe that mink are raised for being turned into fur coats. And if we didn’t wear fur coats, those little animals would never have been born!

Nice creepy reptile,” Frank said, very aware of the driftwood in his coat pocket. “Nice poisonous, fire-breathing reptile.

If the first button of one’s coat is wrongly buttoned, all the rest will be crooked.

I was raised in California, so this whole New York winter thing is completely new for me. I’ve already justified buying seven coats!

Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person’s mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.

He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.

I see them in my audience all the time, with the fur coat, a woman whose hand is always out front, or the two fingers are on the cheek to show her diamond. I don’t have anything against that.

Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”