The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.

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

very young people are true but not resounding instruments.

Reason can never reconcile one to life: nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.

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

Short of a small range of physical acts-a fight, murder, lovemaking-dialogue is the most vigorous and visible inter-action of which characters in a novel are capable. Speech is what characters do to each other.

She had one of those charming faces which, according to the angle from which you see them, look either melancholy or impertinent. Her eyes were grey; her trick of narrowing them made her seem to reflect, the greater part of the time, in the dusk of her second thoughts. With that mood, that touch of arriere pensee, went an uncertain, speaking set of lips.