Memories and inspirations

I had never come across commonplace books until I met up with my school friend Paul Foot in Oxford in 1958. The idea, he explained, was that you kept a notebook in which you transcribed anything interesting you came across in the course of your reading. I started doing it the following year. The first two of the following quotes are from D. H. Lawrence, then my favourite writer:

Horace is already a bit of a mellow varsity man who never quite forgot Oxford.

No old world tumbles except when a young one shoves it over. And why should one howl when one’s grandfather is pushed over a cliff? Goodbye, grandfather, now it’s my turn.

Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be believed. (Beachcomber)

Wherewould we be without a sense of humour? (Very slight pause) Germany! (Willie Rushton)

In real life the women pursue the men. It’s only in the novels of Somerset Maugham that the men pursue the women (Sefton Delmer)

There is no reciprocity.