I am fully intelligent only when I write. I have a certain amount of small-change intelligence, which I carry round with me as, at any rate in a town, one has to carry small money, for the needs of the day, the non-writing day. But it seems to me I seldom purely think ... if I thought more I might write less.

Sacrificers ... are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those that they sacrifice. Oh, the sacrificers, they get it both ways. A person knows themselves that they're able to do without.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable.

Sins cut boldly up through every class in society, but mere misdemeanours show a certain level in life.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Dialogue must appear realistic without being so. Actual realism-the lifting, as it were, of passages from a stenographer's take-down of a 'real life' conversation-would be disruptive. Of what? Of the illusion of the novel. In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.

The passion of vanity has its own depths in the spirit, and is powerfully militant.