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And how is clarity to be acquired? Mainly by taking trouble; and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them.

I was carried away, swept along by the mighty stream of words pouring from the hundreds of pages. To me it was the ultimate book: once you had read it, neither your own life nor the world you lived in would ever look the same.

We had been so unlucky. By the time we had finally learnt to read properly, there had been nothing left for us to read.

A skill once acquired — for example, the power to speak and write and enjoy one’s own language, or another — is less easily lost, more quickly recovered, than mere accumulations of facts. And it seems to me more important to go out into life able to think straight and communicate clearly than even to know — and remember — the contents of every English book since Caedmon. Then, like Medea, even if you lose everything else, you can still feel 'Myself remains'. Whereas stuffed geese, even if stuffed with the Universe, remain geese.

I hadn’t suspected that a tiny glimmer of hope for the future could transform someone so utterly.

It would evidently take more than a political regime, more than dire poverty to stop a woman from wanting to be well dressed: it was a desire as old as the world, as old as the desire for children.

She said she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman’s beauty is a treasure beyond price.

A writer should remember that about his Muse there is a great deal of the Siren. He should view his mental offspring as relentlessly as a Spartan father — if it is not perfectly sound, let it be cast out.

Most of us know accurately only what we constantly relearn; memory is a dipsomaniac, needing to be perpetually refreshed.

Roman laws tended to be long and complex — one of Rome's most enduring legacies to the world is cumbersome and tortuous legal prose.

A kiss is a fleeting thing, but once it has taken place it cannot be undone.

Few men confront the basic tenets of the society in which they live and try to change them. Very few of those are successful. And even fewer survive to reflect on their success. Henry IV was one of these very few.