I'll never be a poet,' said Amory as he finished. 'I'm not enough of a sensualist really; there are only a few obvious things that I notice as primarily beautiful: women, spring evenings, music at night, the sea; I don't catch the subtle things like 'silver-snarling trumpets.' I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never right anything but mediocre poetry.

It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care.

To create souls in men, to create fine happiness and fine despair she must remain deeply proud - proud to be inviolate, proud also to be melting, to be passionate and possessed.

The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say.

There is a moment—Oh, just before the first kiss, a whispered word—something that makes it worth while.

I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires.

Then came the war, old sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very hard to die, but I seemed to bear an enchanted life.