My writing, I am prepared to think, may be a substitute for something I have been born without - a so-called normal relation to society. My books are my relation to society.

The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance--due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author's attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful--and possibly the only--help that can be given.

nobody ever dies of an indignity.

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.

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

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

But surely love wouldn't get so much talked about if there were not something in it?