Most comic writers like to think they could play it straight if only their public would let them. Waugh is able to be grave without difficulty for he… - V. S. Pritchett

I found people were telling stories to themselves without knowing it. It seemed to me that people were living a sort of small sermon that they believed in, but at the same time it was a fairy tale. Selfish desires, along with one or two highly suspect elevated thoughts. They secretly regard themselves as works of art, valuable in themselves.

Prep school, public school, university: these now tedious influences standardize English autobiography, giving the educated Englishman the sad if fascinating appearance of a stuffed bird of sly and beady eye in some old seaside museum. The fixation on school has become a class trait. It manifests itself as a mixture of incurious piety and parlour game.

It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.