Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural. We move between two darkness's.

How few writers can prostitute all their powers!

Ulysses ... is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.

People in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed.

But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.

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

... there are shadows because there are hills.