We pay for vice by the knowledge that we are wicked; we pay for pleasure when we find out too late that we are nothing. - Cyril Connolly

Contemporary books do not keep. The quality in them which makes for their success is the first to go; they turn over night. – Cyril Connolly

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union.

It is by a blend of lively curiosity and intelligent selfishness that the artists who wish to mature late, who feel too old to die, the Goethes, Tolstoys, Voltaires, Titians and Verdis, reach a fruitful senescence. They cannot afford to associate with those who are burning themselves up or preparing for a tragedy or whom melancholy has marked for her own. Not for them the accident-prone, the friend in whom the desire for self-destruction keeps blistering out in broken legs or threatening them in anxiety-neuroses. Not for them the drumming finger, the close-cropt nail, the chewed glasses, the pause on the threshold, the wandering eye, or the repeated ‘um’ and ‘er.’