Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.

Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.

It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.

You confuse what's important with what's impressive.

Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.