... the mere thought of going near a man who is not mellowly pickled, and whose breath reeks of his native fleshy self, is squeamishly unpalatable to me.

Fearful as reality is, it is less fearful than evasions of reality. Look steadfastly into the slit, pinpointed malignant eyes of reality as an old-hand trainer dominates his wild beasts.

Anyone who has attempted to create knows the hellishness of it, which consists in the final inescapability from it. Knows that anything, however deadly humdrum to drug the senses, is preferable to it. Knows the gigantic effort to get started on the boundless, unwieldy, shapeless material; the forest of hesitations; of what to keep and what to throw out; the running-out terror and reluctance in one of finishing.

Sex divorced from love is the thief of personal dignity.

The wretched Artist himself is alternatively the lowest worm that ever crawled when no fire is in him; or the loftiest God that ever sand when the fire is going.

I had got to the dawn of the beautiful not caring, but fully aware, stage, which degenerates so imperceptibly into the doing something unpermissible stage.

England, where nobody ever says what they mean: and by denying feeling, kill it off stone-cold at the roots.