Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.

Temperamentally, the writer exists on happenings, on contacts, conflicts, action and reaction, speed, pressure, tension. Were he acontemplative purely, he would not write.

the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.

The paradox of romantic love -- that what one possesses, one can no longer desire -- was at work.

Spoilt pleasure is a sad, unseemly thing; you can only bury it.

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.

It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home.