My bitterness is not an abstract substance, it is as solid as a Christmas cake; I can cut it in slices and hand it round and there is still plenty left, for tomorrow.

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.

[On journalists:] ... however lyingly libellous they may be: nobody can seriously hurt the reputation of a Great person. If he is hurt: he is not Great. They can but scratch at his skin with their mice nails.

There is a brotherliness about a drinking person, which is coldly lacking in the straight and narrow enemies of drink; the difference between the two is more marked than nationality or belief: it is an opposite species altogether. It is against the unwritten laws of congeniality for them to mix. For me, a man who does not drink is distinctly indecent.

There is a great gulf between the really creative person and normal people. The totally creative person does not have the rest of his life in proper proportion.

In America they make too much fuss of poets; in London they make too little.

One should never go back to a place one has loved; for, however, rough the going forward is, it is better than the snuffing out-of-love return.