Quotes from William Sansom

London is a bad habit one hates to lose.

Trees are green gold

A writer lives, at least, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes.

He already knew that life was largely illusion, that though wonderful things could happen, nevertheless as many disappointments came in compensation: and he knew, too, that life could offer a quality even worse - the probability that nothing would happen at all.

Tall, black-haired, rouged, Kaiser-moustached, he cackled and screamed in weird attitudes, giggling in high soprano, hiding his little black teeth behind an exquisitely gloved hand - the 'poseur' absolute. He was said to have slept with Sarah Bernhard and vomited for a week afterwards.

A Status symbol is an instrument you clash when you want someone to know you are there.