By David Galef

“The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.”

Trying afternoon yesterday with Lady Ottoline Morrell in her stupid new frock at her stupid garden party.

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

I just can’t focus with Thoby coming into the study every fifteen minutes to ask whether it’s teatime yet. Do you think I could pay him to buzz off?

“Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo.”

I almost conked into a lamppost last night. I really must get my eyes checked.

“One wanted fifty pairs of eyes to see with.”

See above.

“Beauty, that was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.”

I am so enamored of Vita! How does she always manage to have such a perfectly arranged coiffure?

“As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.”

Forgot to renew my passport again. Do you suppose I’ll be able to argue my way past German border control?

“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”

A Pseudonymous Anonymous not named Hieronymus! Use for limerick to show Leonard?

“Plots don’t matter.”

I’ve read all of Sherlock Holmes, but I can’t get the hang of suspense.

“Book are the mirrors of the soul.”

If you put together all the volumes of self-reflection published in 1927, it would make me puke.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

Must teach Leonard to cook or I shall go mad.

“Language is wine upon the lips.”

I really need to edit that essay I wrote after two hock and seltzers. Whatever made Lytton think people write better drunk?

“On or about December 1910 human character changed.”

Roger Fry made a pass at me.

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

Mudie’s subscription library says it won’t lend me any more books until I return the twenty-four I took out last month.

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”

I damned well deserve as big an advance for Mrs Dalloway as Arnold Bennett got for Riceyman Steps.

“I am rooted, but I flow.”

I must find a sanitary napkin before I embarrass myself in public.

“Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy.”

My prescription dosage needs constant adjusting.

“Love, the poet said, is woman’s whole existence.”

George Byron is a prick.

“We have made oblongs and stood them upon squares. This is our triumph; this is our consolation.”

I am the Jenga expert of Bloomsbury.