On the subject of dress almost no one, for one or another reason, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do.

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects; is this not also true of fear?

Every love has a poetic relevance of its own; each love brings to light only what to it is relevant. Outside lies the junk-yard of what does not matter.

I am dead against art's being self-expression. I see an inherent failure in any story which fails to detach itself from the author-detach itself in the sense that a well-blown soap-bubble detaches itself from the bowl of the blower's pipe and spherically takes off into the air as a new, whole, pure, iridescent world. Whereas the ill-blown bubble, as children know, timidly adheres to the bowl's lip, then either bursts or sinks flatly back again.

rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.