children like change - for one thing, they never anticipate regret.

The novel does not simply recount experience, it adds to experience.

... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.

The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

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

What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.