Chance is better than choice; it is more lordly. Chance is God, choice is man.

... it appears to me that problems, inherent in any writing, loom unduly large when one looks ahead. Though nothing is easy, little is quite impossible.

Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us - that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy. On the whole, it would seem they adapt themselves well, perhaps better than we do, to changing world conditions - they enlarge their domain, shift their hold on our nerves, and, dispossessed of one habitat, set up house in another. The universal battiness of our century looks like providing them with a propitious climate.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable. If you and I were capable of being altogether house-trained and made jolly, we should be nicer people, but not writers.

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

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.

Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.