I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.

Nothing in life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.

Life has taught me that the greatest tragedy is not to die too soon but to live too long.

idealism, that gaudy coloring matter of passion, fades when it is brought beneath the trenchant white light of knowledge. Ideals, like mountains, are best at a distance.

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.

A good novel cannot be too long or a bad novel too short.

No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.