In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.

The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.