Only connect!...Only connect the prose and the passion.

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out.

I have said that each aspect of the novel demands a different quality of the reader. Well, the prophetic aspect demands two qualities: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

This element of surprise or mystery — the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called — is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence.

When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else.