The most steady, the most self-sufficient nature depends, more than it knows, on its few chosen stimuli.

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.

It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home.

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.

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

The story must spring from an impression or perception pressing enough to have made the writer write. It should magnetize the imagination and give pleasure.

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.