“A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation.”

“Grown-ups didn't seem to realize that for me, as for most other schoolboys, it was easier to keep silent than to speak. I was a natural oyster.”

“Public schoolboys are not merely conservatives, they are by nature totalitarian reactionaries.”

“A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”

“In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.”

“Now, it is of course well known that Christ continually uses the expression 'imitators.' He never says that he asks for admirers, adoring admirers, adherents; and when he uses the expression 'follower' he always explains it in such a way that one perceives that 'imitators' is meant by it, that is not adherents of a teaching but imitators of a life....”