Leo, sadly, has Parkinson's, but he used to cook all sorts of dazzling things.

In our vile English climate, rough winds shake not only the darling buds of May, but of June, July, August and September as well.

I’d never have written the big books in London.

I’m bored stiff by ballet. i can’t bear those muscular white legs like unbaked plaited loaves, and I get quite hysterical every time one of the women sticks out her leg at right angles, and the man suddenly grabs it and walks round in a circle as though he were opening a tin.

Our house is so difficult to find that people always arrive late, which means that by the time we go into dinner, I’ve had so many dry Martinis I’m practically under the piano, and it no longer seems to matter that I haven’t put the potatoes on.

He thought of Hilary’s tantrums, of her vacuum-cleaner kisses, her sharp teeth and scraping hands.

There is something infinitely dingy about the word workshop. Pray that England doesn’t become a nation of workshopkeepers.

But really I’m not terribly interested in what I eat.

To bring the balloon of the mind that bellies and drags in the wind, as Yeats had so perfectly put it, into its narrow shed.

We all need the pipe dream of writing the great novel, or winning the pools, or becoming managing director and kicking all our colleagues in the teeth. The world is deep and dark and full of tigers, and we need those shimmering white castles in the air to creep into when life gets unbearable.