Curiosity in Rome is a form of courtesy.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable. If you and I were capable of being altogether house-trained and made jolly, we should be nicer people, but not writers.

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

Jane Austen, much in advance of her day, was a mistress of the use of the dialogue. She used it as dialogue should be used-to advance the story; not only to show the characters, but to advance.

Ghosts seem harder to please than we are; it is as though they haunted for haunting’s sake -- much as we relive, brood, and smoulder over our pasts.

I am fully intelligent only when I write. I have a certain amount of small-change intelligence, which I carry round with me as, at any rate in a town, one has to carry small money, for the needs of the day, the non-writing day. But it seems to me I seldom purely think ... if I thought more I might write less.

the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.