What depresses me is the inevitable way the second rate forges ahead and the deserving is left behind.

Nothing is more consuming, or more illogical, than the desire for remembrance.

But there is, I have learned, no permanent escape from the past. It may be an unrecognized law of our nature that we should be drawn back, inevitably, to the place where we have suffered most.

The pathos of life is worse than the tragedy.

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.

Surely the novel should be a form of art - but art was not enough. It must contain not only the perfection of art, but the imperfection of nature.

women love with their imagination and men with their senses.