The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. Both assumptions are false: both of them must be accepted as true if we are to go on eating and working and loving, and are to keep open a few breathing holes for the human spirit.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

The sun was already declining and each of the trees held a premonition of night.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.

Human beings have their great chance in the novel.

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.

A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.