To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

He doesn't want you to be real, and to think and to live. He doesn't love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms.

I really don't know what happens next -- one so seldom does.

I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.

Characters must not brood too long. They must not waste time running up and down ladders in their own insides.

People in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed.

Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around the camp-fire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or wooly-rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him.