My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.

A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.

Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down.

There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.

We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.

As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against life.

Real life seems to have no plots.

I never know why self-sacrifice is noble. Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else?

Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past.

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,' said his cousin. 'But we seem to have no other.

A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression, or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.

If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

I think it was [Jean-Luc] Godard who said that life is nothing but a bad copy of film, but then our ambition must be to make better films and better shapes of forms that are given in life.

I think that once somebody sees something, or feels it in the consciousness of society, it starts to allow change for other people.

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

To want is more than to attain.

I like to be loved by my children, and I quite like the Guardian hating me.

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.

I think it's more interesting if you go all the way with the world you have, and really look at it, and push it to an even more extreme extreme.

A patient healthy enough to undergo a kidney transplant might someday no longer need dialysis. That would free up a slot for a new patient.