There are occasions when I would rather feel like a fly than a spider.

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.

A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case.

Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “...There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.

For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.

I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone, even if you do not approve of them.