The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.

Roger Fry is painting me. It is too like me at present, but he is confident he will be able to alter that. Post-Impressionism is at present confined to my lower lip... and to my chin.

The historian records, but the novelist creates.

Failure or success seems to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is the wriggle.

One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.

You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but not everything.

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.