The passion of vanity has its own depths in the spirit, and is powerfully militant.

very young people are true but not resounding instruments.

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.

Each piece of dialogue MUST be "something happening". . .The "amusing" for its OWN sake should above all be censored. . .The functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the writer's mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.

... it appears to me that problems, inherent in any writing, loom unduly large when one looks ahead. Though nothing is easy, little is quite impossible.

Sins cut boldly up through every class in society, but mere misdemeanours show a certain level in life.

At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.