Every love has a poetic relevance of its own; each love brings to light only what to it is relevant. Outside lies the junk-yard of what does not matter.

I am dead against art's being self-expression. I see an inherent failure in any story which fails to detach itself from the author-detach itself in the sense that a well-blown soap-bubble detaches itself from the bowl of the blower's pipe and spherically takes off into the air as a new, whole, pure, iridescent world. Whereas the ill-blown bubble, as children know, timidly adheres to the bowl's lip, then either bursts or sinks flatly back again.

fashion seems to exist for an abstract person who is not you or me.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.

Dialogue is the ideal means of showing what is between the characters. It crystallizes relationships. It should, ideally, be so effective as to make analysis or explanation of the relationships between the characters unnecessary.

The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.