For with my intuition I knew that this man was repeating a pattern over and over again: courting a woman with his intelligence and sympathy, claiming her emotionally; then, when she began to claim in return, running away. And the better a woman was, the sooner he would begin to run. I knew this with my intuition, and yet I sat there in my dark room, looking at the hazed wet brilliance of the purple London night sky, longing with my whole being.

As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital.

It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.

The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great.

I am sure everyone has had the experience of reading a book and finding it vibrating with aliveness, with colour and immediacy. And then, perhaps some weeks later, reading it again and finding it flat and empty. Well, the book hasn't changed: you have.

A woman writer, quitting love before literature when love lets her down, will put literature before love.

You have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.