life is a succession of readjustments.

After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee.

... any fictionis bound to be transposed autobiography.

When I read a story, I relive the moment from which it sprang. A scene burned itself into me, a building magnetized me, a mood orseason of Nature's penetrated me, history suddenly appeared to me in some tiny act, or a face had begun to haunt me before I glanced at it.

Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own. They stay as they were projected.

Nothing, that is say no one, can be such an inexorable tour-conductor as one's own conscience or sense of duty, if one allows either the upper hand: the self-bullying that goes on in the name of sight-seeing is grievous.

rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.