Forgiveness should be an act, but this is a state with him.

People in love, in whom every sense is open, cannot beat off the influence of a place.

somehow at parties at which one stays standing up one seems to require to be more concentratedly intelligent than one does at those at which one can sit down.

...there must be something she wanted; and that therefore she was no lady.

Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us - that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy. On the whole, it would seem they adapt themselves well, perhaps better than we do, to changing world conditions - they enlarge their domain, shift their hold on our nerves, and, dispossessed of one habitat, set up house in another. The universal battiness of our century looks like providing them with a propitious climate.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. It accumulates round itself the understanding of all these persons who bring to it something of their own. It acquires associations, it becomes a form of experience in itself, so that two people who meet can often make friends, find an approach to each other, because of this one great common experience they have had.