No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life--the first twenty years of it--had about them something semi-fictitious.

Someone soon to start on a journey is always a little holy.

The silence of a shut park does not sound like country silence: it is tense and confined.

Everything is very quiet, the streets are never crowded, and the people one dislikes are out of town.

This, my first [bicycle] had an intrinsic beauty. And it opened for me an era of all but flying, which roads emptily crossing theairy, gold-gorsy Common enhanced. Nothing since has equalled that birdlike freedom.

Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.

Certain books come to meet me, as do people.