The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. . . . The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience.

I believe the nearest I've come to perfect love was with a young coal-miner when I was about 16.

Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out.

In every great novel, who is the hero all the time? Not any of the characters, but some unnamed and nameless flame behind them all.

The weakness of modern tragedy[is that] transgression against the social code is made to bring destruction, as though the social code worked our irrevocable fate.

At the back of my life's horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd.

Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little.