A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. It accumulates round itself the understanding of all these persons who bring to it something of their own. It acquires associations, it becomes a form of experience in itself, so that two people who meet can often make friends, find an approach to each other, because of this one great common experience they have had.

But in general, for the purposes of most novelists, the number of objects genuinely necessary for. . .describing a scene will be found to be very small.

Art, at any rate in a novel, must be indissolubly linked with craft.

People in love, in whom every sense is open, cannot beat off the influence of a place.

All my life I have said, "Whatever happens there will always be tables and chairs"--and what a mistake.

very young people are true but not resounding instruments.

Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain.