This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten.

She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her.

America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life's sacred spontaneity. They can't trust life until they can control it.

But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.

I think I am much too valuable a creature to offer myself to a German bullet gratis and for fun.

One could laugh at the world better if it didn't mix tender kindliness with its brutality.

We make a mistake forsaking England and moving out into the periphery of life. After all, Taormina, Ceylon, Africa, America -- as far as we go, they are only the negation of what we ourselves stand for and are: and we're rather like Jonahs running away from the place we belong.