A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.

At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.

I do not believe in Belief.

A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.

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.

I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.