Life - how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.

If Ivan was thought of as an evasive, irresolute and will-less man in later years, one has to suppose that his mother had broken his will.

The attitude to foreigners is like the attitude to dogs: dogs are neither human nor British, but so long as you keep them under control, give them their exercise, feed them, pat them, you will find their wild emotions are amusing, and their characters interesting.

One is inclined to add only one emollient sentence: that whoever you are and whatever you have done, you will be reversed if you reach old age, for then you will look like a hard old walnut or like some beatified infant of boundless cynicism – the London ideas of innocence. You will look so sweet that you will be able to get away with anything.

Your successes were never due to your brains. You achieved them because you have “character.

In no other city can one so cheerfully enjoy the accidents of bad art.

As Londoners, we are – you see – drama itself and have no reason to whip ourselves up into states with sirens and altercations. We like the police to be quiet, the ambulances discreet, and the fire engines jolly.

The men vanish, but toasts, prayers – and property – remains.

Queen Victoria – a mixture of national landlady and actress.

Detective stories are the art-for-art’s sake of yawning Philistinism.