Playwright

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

Impropriety is the soul of wit.

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.