I can't see or feel the conflict between love and religion. To me, they're the same thing.

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.

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

[A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.

The writer, like a swimmer caught by an undertow, is borne in an unexpected direction. He is carried to a subject which has awaited him--a subject sometimes no part of his conscious plan. Reality, the reality of sensation, has accumulated where it was least sought. To write is to be captured--captured by some experience to which one may have given hardly a thought.

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.

... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.