While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

Nothing dates like hate and in literature a little of it goes a very long way.

Sheep with a nasty side.

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another... It is when we begin to hurt those whom we love that the guilt with which we are born becomes intolerable, and since all those whom we love intensely and continuously grow part of us, and since we hate ourselves in them, so we torture ourselves and them together.

No education is worth having that does not teach the lesson of concentration on a task, however unattractive. These lessons, if not learnt early, will be learnt, if at all, with pain and grief in later life.

In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient; afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable.

The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him stupid is severe.