There's that whole thing that happens in relationships - you can love someone but, as soon as they stop loving you so unconditionally that they stop being themselves, it can be so dangerous.
London, how could one ever be tired of it?
There are some people who cannot get onto a train without imagining that they are about to voyage into the significant unknown; as though the notion of movement were inseparably connected with the notion of discovery, as though each displacement of the body were a displacement of the soul.
I've always thought that very few people grow old as admirably as academics. At least books never let them down.
I need words and print. . . I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.
I used to be a reasonably careless and adventurous person before I had children; now I am morbidly obsessed by seat-belts and constantly afraid that low-flying aircraft will drop on my children's school.
You have to be careful what you imagine, because the act of imagining is the act of encouraging yourself to be a certain kind of person.
Logic is essentially a tool for getting at truth; it is the tool, for without it no reasoning is possible in any field of human enquiry whatsoever.
I don't make a division between an art film and commercial art.
Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare.
Jane Eyre "I desired more. . . than was within my reach. Who blames me? Many call me discontented. I couldn't help it: the restlessness is in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.