Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie; when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.

But in general, for the purposes of most novelists, the number of objects genuinely necessary for. . .describing a scene will be found to be very small.

Nothing, that is say no one, can be such an inexorable tour-conductor as one's own conscience or sense of duty, if one allows either the upper hand: the self-bullying that goes on in the name of sight-seeing is grievous.

[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.

I suspect victims; they win in the long run.

We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can.