irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay.

... the novel, as a living force, if not as a work of art, owes an incalculable debt to what we call, mistakenly, the new psychology, to Freud, in his earlier interpretations, and more truly, I think, to Jung.

Preserve, within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reverie.

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.

I revolted from sentimentality, less because it was false than because it was cruel.

Nobody, not even the old, not even the despairing, wished to come to an end in time or in eternity.

For me, the novel is experience illumined by imagination.