Random Harvest

Have you ever been going somewhere with a crowd and you're certain it's the wrong road and you tell them, but they won't listen, so you just have to plod along in what you know is the wrong direction till somebody more important gets the same idea?

There's only one thing more important... and that is, after you've done what you set out to do, to feel that it's been worth doing.

...they didn’t think there was anything very odd in anyone being a little odd.

For London, Blampied claimed, was of all cities in the world the most autumnal —its mellow brickwork harmonizing with fallen leaves and October sunsets, just as the etched grays of November composed themselves with the light and shade of Portland stone. There was a charm, a deathless charm, about a city whose inhabitants went about muttering, "The nights are drawing in," as if it were a spell to invoke the vast, sprawling creature-comfort of winter.

As most real writers do, he wrote because he had something to say, not because of any specific ambition to be a writer.

It's a very remarkable story." "Remarkable's a well-chosen word. It doesn't give you away.

He was always busy, yet never hurried; always pleasant, yet never effusive; alwayss reserved, yet never disdainful. In short, a perfect gentlemen.

How can you get all right again when you're not happy in a right place?

(Miss Ponsonby, his old governess, had once adjured him: When people say “How are you?” the correct answer is “How are YOU?” If you tell them how you are, you show yourself a person of inferior breeding…

Life's more important than a living. So many people who make a living are making death, not life. Don't ever join them. They're the gravediggers of our civilization -- the safe men, the compromisers, the money-makers, the muddlers-through.