“The art of change-ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. (The change-ringer's) passion - and it is a passion - finds its satisfaction in mathematical completeness and mechanical perfection, and as his bell weaves her way rhythmically up from lead to hinder place and down again, he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed.”

“Passions change and morph over time as one comes to know and understand oneself more deeply. As you follow your passions, you will find yourself drawn irresistibly onward until one day, you wake up and find you are living a passionate life, filled with a sense of destiny.”

“The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.”

“He was trying to gather up the scarlet threads of life and weave them into a pattern; to find his way through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering.”

“Personally, I think so-called "common language" is more interesting and apropos than "proper English"; it's passionate and powerful in ways that "wherefore art thou ass and thy elbow" just isn't.”

“It has also been the peculiar lot of our country to be visited by the worst kind of English travellers.”