to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere.

Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

life is a succession of readjustments.

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.

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.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.