I hated the things they believe in, the things they so innocently and charmingly pretended. I hated the sanctimonious piety that let people hurt helpless creatures. I hated the prayers and the hymns - the fountains and the red images that coloured their drab music, the fountains filled with blood, the sacrifice of the lamb.

The transcendental point of view, the habit of thought bred by communion with earth and sky, had refined the grain while it had roughened the husk.

the old alone have finality. What is true of the young today may be false tomorrow. They are enveloped in emotion; and emotion as a state of being is fluent and evanescent.

In the past few years, I have made a thrilling discovery ... that until one is over sixty, one can never really learn the secret of living. One can then begin to live, not simply with the intense part of oneself, but with one's entire being.

I suppose I am a born novelist, for the things I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember.

you could have forgiven my committing a sin if you hadn't feared that I had a committed a pleasure as well.

the great novels have marched with the years. They are the contemporaries of time.