“Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.” — D. H. Lawrence

God how I hate new countries: They are older than the old, more sophisticated, much more conceited, only young in a certain puerile vanity more like senility than anything.

I believe that a man is converted when first he hears the low, vast murmur of life, of human life, troubling his hitherto unconscious self.

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters - not to talk in armies and nations and numbers - but to track it home.