In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.

The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.

Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.

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

With three or more people there is something bold in the air: direct things get said which would frighten two people alone and conscious of each inch of their nearness to one another. To be three is to be in public - you feel safe.

Imagination of my kind is most caught, most fired, most worked upon by the unfamiliar: I have thrivenon the changes and chances, the dislocations andcontrasts which have made up so much of my life.

It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.