But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.

Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

The novelist's--any writer's--object is to whittle down his meaning to the exactest and finest possible point. What, of course, isfatal is when he does not know what he does mean: he has no point to sharpen.

We are minor in everything but our passions.

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.