They go forth [into the world] with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts. An undeveloped heart - not a cold one. The difference is important.

Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged - well, one can't do all these things at once, worse luck, because they're so contradictory. It's then that proportion comes in - to live by proportion. Don't begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.

It is never possible for a novelist to deny time inside the fabric of his novel: he must cling, however lightly, to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable tapeworm, otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in his case, is a blunder.

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

Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world's enemy, and she must stifle it.

The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power.

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.