I wrote much because I was paid little. I had no great desire to leave a literary name behind me.
Death comes along like a gas bill one can’t pay.
As we are all solipsists, and all die, the world dies with us. Only very minor literature aims at apocalypse.
Art is rare and sacred and hard work, and there ought to be a wall of fire around it.
Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy.
To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.
Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
I start at the beginning, go on to the end, then stop.
Fumbling for a word is everybody’s birthright.
We only need to wear shoes because the British built roads which hurt our feet.
I’ve always felt that English women had to be approached in a sisterly manner, rather than an erotic manner.
Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is.
Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.
Put it off for a bit. All life is putting off. Well, not entirely.
I was very lighthearted. This often the way when the abandonment of personal responsibility is enforced: neither wronged innocence or just guilt can seriously impair the sensation of freedom one has.
A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he’s supposed to be doing.
I don’t write out of fear. I write out of a strong urge to meet death on its own eternal terms, because the fact is that if you write as little as a page of prose-even bad prose-that is eternal.
In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.
The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.
Any book has behind it all the other books that have been written.