“As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers, so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.”

“There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another... It is when we begin to hurt those whom we love that the guilt with which we are born becomes intolerable, and since all those whom we love intensely and continuously grow part of us, and since we hate ourselves in them, so we torture ourselves and them together.”

“While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.”

“While thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.Cyril Connolly (English critic and editor, 1903-1974)”

“A child, left to play alone, says of quite an easy thing, 'Now I am going to to do something very difficult'. Soon, out of vanity, fear and emptiness, he builds up a world of custom, convention and myth in which everything must be just so; certain doors are one-way streets, certain trees sacred, certain paths taboo. Then along comes a grown-up or a more robust child; they kick over the imaginary wall, climb the forbidden tree, regard the difficult as easy and the private world is destroyed. The instinct to create myth, to colonize reality with the emotions, remains. The myths become tyrannies until they are swept away, when we invent new tyrannies to hide our suddenly perceived nakedness. Like caddis-worms or like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.”

“There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.”

“A rune for the very bored: when very bored say to yourself: "It was during the next twenty minutes that there occurred one of those tiny incidents which revolutionizes the whole course of our life and alter the face of history. Truly we are the playthings of enormous fates.”