At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.

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.

Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all.

... in nine out of ten cases the original wish to write is the wish to make oneself felt[ellipsis in source] the non-essential writer never gets past that wish.

Plot is the knowing of destination.

nobody ever dies of an indignity.

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.