"The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above."
Cyril Connolly"Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once."
Cyril Connolly"Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action."
Cyril Connolly"Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise."
Cyril Connolly"The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife."
Cyril Connolly"Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth."
Cyril Connolly"We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving."
Cyril Connolly"Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature."
Cyril Connolly"The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore."
Cyril Connolly"It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book."
Cyril Connolly