I haven't much opinion of words. They're apt to set fire to a dry tongue, that's what I say.

The attraction of horror is a mental, or even an intellectual, excitement, but the fascination of the repulsive, so noticeable incontemporary writing, can spring openly from some rotted substance within our civilization.

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.

Passion alone could destroy passion. All the thinking in the world could not make so much as a dent in its surface.

So long as the serpent continues to crawl on the ground, the primary influence of woman will be indirect.

...I had grown up in a world that was dominated by immature age. Not by vigorous immaturity, but by immaturity that was old and tired and prudent, that loved ritual and rubric, and was utterly wanting in curiosity about the new and the strange. Its era has passed away, and the world it made has crumbled around us. Its finest creation, a code of manners, has been ridiculed and discarded.

The worst thing about war is that so many people enjoy it.