A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow.
Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
Already we Viewers, when not viewing, have begun to whisper to one another that the more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
And it is doubtful if our society can last much longer without religion, for either it will destroy itself by some final idiot war, or, at peace but hurrying in the wrong direction, it will soon largely cease to be composed of persons.
And the whole circumstances of their wartime life favour a sharply democratic outlook. Men and women with a gift for leadership now turn up in unexpected places. The new ordeals blast away the old shams.
Any last pretence of society having a religious foundation and framework, being contained at all by religion, has vanished.
Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.
Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.
Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.
I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.
I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.
I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes.
I wonder how many of you feel as I do about this great Battle and evacuation of Dunkirk. The news of it came as a series of surprises and shocks, followed by equally astonishing new waves of hope.
If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.
If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.
In plain words: now that Britain has told the world that she has the H-Bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare.
In the last four days in the trenches I don't think I'd eight hours sleep altogether.
It is frightfully difficult to walk in the trenches owing to the slippery nature of things, the most appalling thing is to see the stretcher bearers trying to get the wounded men up to the Field Dressing station.
It so happens that this war, whether those at present in authority like it or not, has to be fought as a citizen's war.
Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.
Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.
Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.
Our average programme was ten hours a day, and nobody grumbled more than the old regulars who had never been compelled before to do so much and for so long.
Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.
Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.
Property is the old-fashioned way of thinking of a country as a thing, and a collection of things in that thing, all owned by certain people and constituting property; instead of thinking of a country as the home of a living society with the community itself as the first test.
Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.
She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.
She was not pretty, but she might have been handsome if somebody had kept telling her that she was pretty.
Since the second war... we are sure of nothing but sex... We are now piling on to sex the whole load of our increasing dissatisfactions, our despair, a burden far greater than it can safely take.
The communication trenches are simply canals, up to the waist in some parts, the rest up to the knees. There are only a few dug-outs and those are full of water or falling in.
The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?
The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.
The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.
The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
The racism, the sexism, I never let it be my problem, it's their problem. If I see a door comin' my way, I'm knockin' it down. And if I can't knock down the door, I'm sliding through the window. I'll never let it stop me from what I wanna do.
There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.
There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going.
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.
We cannot go forward and build up this new world order, and this is our war aim, unless we begin to think differently one must stop thinking in terms of property and power and begin thinking in terms of community and creation.
We ended the war high in the world's regard. We could have taken over its moral leadership, spoken and acted for what remained of its conscience, but we chose to act otherwise.
We may not ourselves find the right healing symbols, but, just as a first step, we can at least believe that man lives under God in a great mystery.
We pay when old for the excesses of youth.
We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.
Western man is schizophrenic.
When I was young there was no respect for the young, and now that I am old there is no respect for the old. I missed out coming and going.
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