Almost everybody wore a curious limpidity of expression, like newborn babies or souls just after death. Dazed but curiously dignified.... after a criseof hysterical revulsion and tiredness, I passed beyondand became entered by a rather sublime feeling.

Don't you understand that all language is dead currency? How they keep on playing shop with it all the same.

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.

Dialogue in fiction is what characters do to one another.

Childish fantasy, like the sheath over the bud, not only protects but curbs the terrible budding spirit, protects not only innocence from the world, but the world from the power of innocence.

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

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.