For me, the novel is experience illumined by imagination.

Only on the surface of things have I ever trod the beaten path. So long as I could keep from hurting anyone else, I have lived, as completely as it was possible, the life of my choice. I have been free. . . . I have done the work I wished to do for the sake of that work alone.

Given two tempers and the time, the ordinary marriage produces anarchy.

I don't like human nature, but I do like human beings.

What fools people are when they think they can make two lives belong together by saying words over them.

it is wiser to be conventionally immoral than unconventionally moral. It isn't the immorality they object to, but the originality.

After all, you can't expect men not to judge by appearances.