"Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not."

“Government wars aren't my wars; they've got nowt to do with me, because my own war's all that I'll ever be bothered about.”

“Few writers who have managed to acquire his reputation can have been so much at the mercy of crude emotion.”

“Makes Room at the Top look like a vicarage tea-party.”

“You can always rely on a society of equals taking it out on the women.”

“Everybody thinks they'll never get married at your age. So did Jack, he told me. You think you can go on all your life being single, I remember he said, but you suddenly find out that you can't.”

“I realized it might be possible to do such a thing, run for money, trot for wages on piece work at a bob a puff rising bit by bit to a guinea a gasp and retiring through old age at thirty-two because of lace-curtain lungs, a football heart, and legs like varicose beanstalks.”