
“I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.”
Source: Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography
First Week, Second Day. Compare: "Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our apish nation Limps after in base imitation", William Shakespeare, Richard II, act ii. sc. 1.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)
“I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.”
Source: Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 110.
Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 2.
1924
“Getting involved is the privilege of those who do not like the habit.”
Original: (it) Mettersi in gioco è il privilegio di chi non ama l'abitudine.
Source: prevale.net
Garden of Tortures
“Most first novels are disguised autobiographies. This autobiography is a disguised novel.”
Opening lines to the preface, p. 9
Memoirs, Unreliable Memoirs (1980)
“Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.”
Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius