Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate.

Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.

The test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it.

If you've ever really been poor you remain poor at heart all your life. I've often walked when I could very well afford to take a taxi because I simply couldn't bring myself to waste the shilling it would cost.

There is no magic method of beginning... Take hold of your nerves, and jump.

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

I ought to reflect again and again, and yet again, that the beings that I have to steer are just as inevitable in the scheme of evolution as I am myself; have just as much right to be themselves as I am entitled to; and they all deserve from me as much sympathy as I give to myself.